


John Hughes Did Not Direct My Life

by nascentgalaxies



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - No Hale Fire, Bottom Derek, Childhood Friends, Fluff, M/M, Pop Culture, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:15:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 48,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/783841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nascentgalaxies/pseuds/nascentgalaxies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles and Derek are childhood friends who drifted apart. When Stiles joins the lacrosse team against his will, the universe (with a little help from Laura and Lydia) chooses to push them back together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [candybree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/candybree/gifts).



> This fic was inspired by my love for childhood romances and 80's movies directed by John Hughes. I really have no excuse for this monstrosity besides my own desire to write something where the Hales are all alive and happy. 
> 
> Takes place in the beginning of their junior year. Stiles and Derek are in the same grade, and Scott, Isaac, Boyd and Erica are not werewolves. Some plot points were inspired by the Teen Wolf novel On Fire, the Search for the Cure webisodes, and the show itself.
> 
> Dedicated to my beloved cabbages, Candy and Jess.

  

 

"What ever happened to chivalry? Does it only exist in 80's movies? I want John Cusack holding a boombox outside my window. I wanna ride off on a lawnmower with Patrick Dempsey. I want Jake from Sixteen Candles waiting outside the church for me. I want Judd Nelson thrusting his fist into the air because he knows he got me. Just once I want my life to be like an 80's movie, preferably one with a really awesome musical number for no apparent reason. But no, no, John Hughes did not direct my life."

– Olive, _Easy A_

            “Tryouts for lacrosse are next week,” Scott announces, slapping his lunch tray down on the table in front of Stiles.

            Stiles glowers up at him with a mouthful of chicken nuggets and plum sauce. He’s always been of the firm opinion that it’s best to just smile and nod at whatever dumb idea is struggling to materialize in Scott’s brain, preferably until Scott forgets he had the idea in the first place. But there’s something about Scott’s smile that immediately has alarm bells ringing in Stiles’s head, and that’s never been a good sign.

            “I was thinking of trying out,” Scott continues, sitting down.

            Scratch that. Unless the idea is _so_ _phenomenally stupid_ that Stiles almost chokes on his food, Stiles is going to smile and nod. This is _not_ one of those times. Scott, oblivious, digs in to his turkey sandwich while Stiles guzzles his apple juice and tries to regain the ability to breathe. Stiles stands up for the sole purpose of reaching across the table and smacking Scott on the head.

            “Ow! That hurt!” Scott rubs the back of his head, a wounded pout in place.

            “Good!” Stiles says, redoubling his glower once he’s seated again. “Where do I even start with the list of reasons why that is the stupidest idea you’ve ever had? Oh! How about the asthma thing, or the socially awkward recluse thing, or the daily beatings you will _undoubtedly_ face, or—”

            “Allison and Lydia,” Scott says, bulldozing right over what would have been a thoroughly convincing argument. “They watch Jackson play.”

            Stiles resists the urge to hit Scott again. Instead he deflates like a popped balloon. Scott’s been in love with Allison since she moved to Beacon Hills near the end of sophomore year. Stiles pities him, even though Allison befriended the one girl Stiles has been crushing on, pathetically, since third grade.

            Scott and Stiles are the polar opposites of popular, as evidenced by their totally bereft table in the cafeteria. And the fact that their clique has consisted of two members – Stiles Stilinski, and Scott McCall – since they were in freshman year at Beacon Hills High.  

            “Why am I not surprised that this involves your beloved Allison?” Stiles asks.

            Scott just shrugs, and smiles sheepishly, like the asshole he is.

            “Lydia watches lacrosse, too.”

            “What’s your poi—oh, no. No no _no_ I am _not_ trying out with you! There’s a difference between impressing the love of your life and embarrassing yourself irreversibly in front of the whole school, Scott!” He laughs, and it’s semi-hysterical. “It sure as hell is _not_ the first one!”

            The hysteria blooms in Stiles’s throat, thorny and ugly, when he sees that Scott is now staring down at his sandwich like it has betrayed him. When he looks up at Stiles again—yup, those are his big brown puppy dog eyes. Stiles has never hated anyone more.

            “But. Stiles. It’s _Allison_.”

            “You have got to be kidding me.”

            “Please?”

            Stiles picks up a chicken nugget with such fervour that he flings French fries all over the table.

            “Fine! But if I die, it’s _your ass_ I’m gonna haunt!”

            Scott’s sunny grin almost, _almost_ makes the promise of bodily harm worthwhile.

 

***

 

            Massaging his calves in the locker room after tryouts, Stiles thinks it probably wasn’t worthwhile. At all. Not even a little. If he thought Finstock was an insane economics and gym teacher, it made him an absolutely psychoticlacrosse coach.

            Tryouts had started out fine. The warm-ups had been just like any other gym class Stiles had suffered through. They had shot balls into the net once they were good and sweaty, and it had been a little more challenging, but thankfully low-impact for Stiles’s fragile bones.

            It all went to hell after that. 

            Finstock pitted three offensive players against two defenders, and then increased the numbers to four on four, and by the time they began a full-field scrimmage Stiles was ready to expire like a beached whale in the middle of the field. It didn’t help that Finstock had the experienced players take part in the tryouts, ten percent for the sake of knowing who to cut, but about ninety percent so the newbies could get beaten to death, or weep, or wet themselves.

            The co-captains were the worst.

            Jackson has been the King of Douches since he and Stiles met in kindergarten. He was fifty times worse with Lydia and Allison and a bunch of inexperienced wimps to show off to. He would, without question, turn his douchiness up to eleven against peons like Stiles, and Stiles will be finding bruises on his body for weeks now, courtesy of Jackson Whittemore.

            Derek Hale is worse. Way worse. He is supernaturally good at every position Finstock has him play. He is ruthless, way more ruthless than Jackson, and Stiles is pretty sure he saw him make several freshmen cry. Stiles is lucky that Derek never touched him on the field or even really acknowledged him. He would still be crying out on the grass with those freshmen if he had.

            Five minutes after tryouts, Finstock bustles into the locker room with a clipboard and announces to a room of mostly inattentive teenagers:

            “Listen up, everyone! Great tryouts. Great. I mean, no, some of you were downright terrible. I’ve literally seen _fleas_ play better lacrosse than some of you. But if you’re any better than Greenberg, you’ll find your names posted on the bulletin board outside the gym on Wednesday morning. Practice starts Friday this week, four o’clock. Any of you see your names on that list, I better see you there or you’re getting an F in econ!”

            Stiles scoffs at how horrendously improbable it is he’ll be on that list as Finstock bustles back out of the locker room, muttering to himself.

            Scott sits down next to him and starts to unlace his shoes, a dopey grin on his face. The grin could either be about Allison, or it could be gas. With that face it’s always a toss-up. Stiles has only known Scott for a little over two years, but he is so transparent sometimes that Stiles can’t help but laugh.

            “How do you think you did, buddy?” Stiles asks, biting his lip to keep from doing just that.

            “Huh? Oh. Good, I hope.” The dopey smile returns for half a second, and then disappears completely to be replaced by a frown. “That guy, uh, number eight? Derek Hale? He might have screwed me over, though.”

            “Yeah, I know. Way to make us all look terrible.”

            “Wait. Stiles, didn’t you say you used to be friends with Derek?

            Stiles pauses in the middle of stripping off his sweaty blue gym shirt, promptly realizes he can’t see Scott through his shirt, and tears it off. He glances over his shoulder as though Derek might be standing right behind him, but of course he isn’t, he’s on the other side of the locker room, talking to Boyd and Isaac. Derek hasn’t spoken to Stiles since their last year of middle school. Trying out for the lacrosse team won’t change the fact that Derek prefers his new posse to Stiles.  

            “Oh, uh. We were.”

            “Why? He’s _such_ a dick.”

            Stiles fumbles to fold his shirt, fails, and rolls is up instead, shoving it in the duffel bag he uses for his dirty gym clothes.

            “Personally, I think participating in sports turns people into dicks. Especially lacrosse.” He levels Scott with his most serious stare. “You sure you want to be a part of the Dick Brigade, Scott?”

            “Shut up, Stiles.” Scott laughs, shoving Stiles’s shoulder. The movement tilts Stiles sideways, and he glances instinctively towards Derek. Derek shocks Stiles out of his skin when he sees Derek staring over at them on the bench. Staring at Stiles, specifically, much more intensely than Stiles is prepared for. Stiles is positive Derek heard everything they were saying. But no, it’s impossible—the locker room is full of shouting boys and the persistent hiss of the showers. Stiles is paranoid. Nothing new there.

            “Isaac and Danny aren’t that bad,” Scott says, breaking Stiles out of his trance. Derek isn’t even looking in their direction anymore.

            “No, they’re dicks by association.”

            “Okay, whatever, stop saying ‘dick’.”

            “Too much homoeroticism for you?” Stiles asks, grinning and waggling his eyebrows at Scott. “Well! Do I have news for you! This is a men’s locker room. This is where homoeroticism is _born._ ” Scott’s response is to yet again punch him in the shoulder. “Jesus Christ, Scott, stop hitting me, Jackson already turned me into one giant bruise.”

            The two of them slap-fight on the bench for a minute before Jackson walks by and says, loudly enough for anyone in the vicinity to hear, “Wow, yeah, _real_ slim pickings this year.”

            He walks on with the smarmy grin Stiles has loathed since first grade. In first grade Jackson had pissed Stiles off so much he’d kicked him in the shin. Right now, bruised and battered as Stiles is, he can barely muster a decent comeback.

            “Don’t worry, Jackson, if you keep up the good work you just _might_ be able to keep your position as _co-captain_.”

            It’s a sore spot with Jackson. Seeing the way Jackson’s shoulders tense as he pretends to ignore Stiles and keep walking is enough to give Stiles the thrill of a job well done. Scott rolls his eyes at him as he changes into a fresh pair of shoes.

            But whatever, it’s not like Stiles is going to get beaten up by Jackson on a daily basis or anything. He will not see his name on that bulletin board on Wednesday, and Derek, well, he’ll continue to brood in the corner with his Dick Brigade just like before.

            When Stiles turns to see if Derek’s staring in his direction again, Derek is already gone.  

 

***

 

            Stiles checks the bulletin board outside the gymnasium first thing Wednesday morning with a gaggle of other anxious boys. Scott is clinging to his arm so hard Stiles is losing all the feeling in his fingers.

            “I’m on the team. I’m—I’m actually on it. Oh my god.”

            Scott’s knees give out, and he has to drape himself around Stiles’s body like a demented octopus or else Stiles is pretty sure he’d crumple to the floor and never get up again.

            “Really? Good going!” He pats Scott’s arm in what he guesses is a manly fashion, scanning the list for his own name. No Stilinski. Oh, thank god. The relief swells in him, but his relief is short-lived as he does a horrified double take.

            For some reason, his last name is up where the B’s are supposed to be. He thinks he might have heard Finstock calling him Bilinski out on the lacrosse field on Monday. Someone must have corrected him last minute, because that’s definitely his name, Stilinski, whited-out and handwritten up with the B’s. On a list. Of all the new members on the lacrosse team.

            Oh, shit.

            Shit, shit, shit.

            He is going to die.

 

***

 

            Lacrosse practice is ten times as bad as lacrosse tryouts. It involves suicide runs, and wanting to _commit_ suicide, and, as predicted, being tossed on the ground numerous times by both Jackson _and_ Derek, and, adding insult to injury, a freshman named Taylor. Stiles has said, “I hate you so much,” to Scott so many times his voice is hoarse when the sun begins to set behind the trees. Allison was in the stands for the first hour of practice, however, so Scott doesn’t take any of Stiles’s death threats seriously.

            Finstock finally, miraculously, blows the whistle at six o’clock and declares the day’s practice over. After Finstock hands out sheets with the fall season’s schedule, it takes every ounce of willpower for Stiles not to just die on the spot. Instead Stiles half-crawls his way to the water bottle he left near the stands and sucks at it like dying man. It tastes so good after all the exercise he doesn’t realize anyone’s nearby until a voice says, “Hey,” and he ends up spewing water down the front of his jersey.

            “Hey, asshole, this jersey’s new,” Stiles says, wiping at the front of his newly dirt-christened jersey.

            Finstock had demanded numbers from them in economics class two days ago. Finstock had then appeared in the locker room at four o’clock today with a box full of new jerseys, and Stiles was too awed by the number 24 and his name on a jersey to really care how Finstock had obtained them so quickly.

            “It’s supposed to get dirty,” Derek says. And. Oh. It’s Derek. Stiles hurriedly wipes the water from his chin with the back of his hand.

            “Oh, yeah, I guess so,” he answers. Stiles wonders why Derek’s here, actually paying attention to him, until he sees Derek has a lacrosse bag next to the bench, from which he extricates a full water bottle. Derek drinks it like Calvin Klein model, or the guy in sports-themed porn right before he has sex with another dude. Not that Stiles would know what that looks like.

            When the hell did Derek stop being the awkward gangly kid with too-big front teeth and weird ears to this—this… guy, anyway? He’s filled out and has _stubble_ , while Stiles is still all clumsy limbs and hair that won’t do what he wants, whether he buzzes it, or lets it grow out a little as he is now.

            Derek’s hair is annoying and perfect. Of course it fucking is.

            “So, uh. What’s up?”

            “You need to get better,” Derek tells him, “or Coach is definitely gonna bench you.”

            “Ha, it’s hilarious that you think I care.”

            Derek raises both of his eyebrows in what Stiles assumes is mild shock.

            “I only tried out for Scott.”

            “For _Scott_?”

            “Yeah. My _friend_. That’s what friends do. I didn’t expect to be picked at all, but here I am. Playing lacrosse, apparently.”

            Now Derek’s eyebrows are curving downward. Derek is much better at frowning than he is at being shocked. Stiles finishes off his water bottle, waiting for his words to sink in and for a response to perhaps come out of Derek’s mouth sometime within the next hour.

            “You should still try to improve. For the team. If someone gets injured during a game, benchwarmers can’t always be benchwarmers.”

            And he leaves, heading towards the locker rooms. He’s replaced a moment later by Scott, who’s huffing and puffing, one step away from needing his inhaler.

            “So yeah, it turns out Derek is a huger dick than we originally suspected,” Stiles says, while Scott retrieves his inhaler from his bag and medicates himself with far too much gusto. “You okay there?”

            “Yeah,” Scott says, breathlessly. “Yeah, of course Derek’s a dick. That’s why I can’t believe you guys used to be friends.” He pauses, sitting down on the bench to regain full usage of his lungs. “No, wait, on second thought it does make sense. You’re an asshole, too.”

            “We know that already,” Stiles says, brushing the topic aside with a wave of his hand. “What I’d like to know is why you’re in the process of having a coronary. Is it from the thing that starts with Al and ends with lisson?”  

            “Maybe,” Scott says. Judging by the hitch in Scott’s breathing Stiles knows he hit the nail right on the head. Scott is just _bursting_ to tell him something, and these days Allison is all Scott gets truly excited about. Okay, Allison and maybe red meat. Scott had presented Stiles with plenty of inappropriate noises the last time he’d eaten Stiles’s dad’s barbecued steak.

            “I just talked to her about lacrosse!” Scott finally explodes. “But I can’t tell if she likes me or not? Because she’s so nice? Like. How is it possible for one person to be so nice?”

            It’s nothing Stiles hasn’t heard a million times already.

            “You know, you _could_ just ask her out. It would be a lot easier than this whole lacrosse scheme. It might only involve bruises of the sexy variety.”

            “You really think I’d impress her? _Me?_ ”

            “Bro, if she’s as nice as you say she is, your shortcomings shouldn’t matter.”

            “What about Lydia?”

            “I’m pretty sure I’m never, ever going to impress her. Ever. I’d have a better chance impressing Derek Hale, which is basically like impressing a rock.”

Stiles gets up off the bench to make his way towards the locker rooms, and, now that he’s caught his breath, Scott follows at his heels.

“Hey, I thought we were done with the homoerotic jokes.”

            Stiles puts an arm around Scott’s shoulders, and with utmost sincerity says:

            “I’m never done with homoerotic jokes, Scott.”

 

***

 

            They have their first game at the beginning of October. Just as Derek predicted, Stiles is benched for the entire game. But at least he has Scott as a fellow benchwarmer. Jackson and Derek score a majority of the goals, all muscular and intimidating in their bright red lacrosse uniforms rather than pale and skinny-legged like Stiles.

            Derek scores the winning goal during the last twenty seconds. Stiles finds himself screaming with the rest of the crowd, jumping up and down and hugging Scott like it’s all a big deal. In reality he doesn’t actually care that Derek won. Not really. He’s just glad Jackson’s going to be all pouty and jaw-clenchy for the rest of the week for not scoring the final goal.

            Any slight against Jackson is Christmas for Stiles.

            Pumped up on post-game adrenaline, Stiles stays up late that night, talking to Scott on AIM video chat, multitasking by idly researching McCarthyism in the Cold War. It’s too easy for someone like Stiles to get lost in the bowels of Wikipedia.

            “Jackson’s totally going to take his anger out on us during practice. You know that, right?” Scott asks him, grinning from Stiles’s laptop screen like the prospect is a myth he hopes Stiles is going to bust.

            “Oh, probably,” Stiles says. “And once again I’m going to blame you.”

            “Whatever. I know you’re all talk and you secretly love lacrosse. You know what Derek told me the other day?”

            Stiles had been balancing a pen on his upper lip for lack of anything better to do with his mouth, but he stops, frowning, and puts the pen between his fingers instead.

            “What?”

            “He said if I want to improve at lacrosse I should be ‘more like you’.”

            The pen falls out of Stiles’s fingers and onto the floor.

            “He said—me? Why? Are you sure it was Derek?”

            “Yeah, it was Derek!” Scott says, exasperated.

            “What the hell did he mean? He just told me, like, two weeks ago that I should stop sucking if I don’t want to get benched. And guess who was benched the whole game? This guy!” He points to himself for emphasis.

            “Obviously you suck less than me.”

            “I highly, highly doubt that.”

            The two of them pause for a bit, Scott giving Stiles a fond smile Stiles finds vaguely pitying.

            “Why were you friends with him, anyway?” Scott blurts out, appearing genuinely curious as to how two opposing forces could have once been attached at the hip the same way he and Stiles are, now.

            Stiles has only mentioned his history with Derek once or twice to Scott in passing. He forgets, sometimes, that Scott didn’t live in Beacon Hills before high school. Not until Scott’s mom took custody of him in the divorce and moved here, to a house she was lucky enough to receive in her mother’s will. Everyone who grew up in Beacon Hills, meanwhile, knows Derek and Stiles were, once upon a time, best friends.

            “Uh. Well. We sort of knew each other since kindergarten? But my mom, she, she worked as a social worker, and Talia—Mrs. Hale, I mean, she’s this big-time attorney. She sometimes worked with child abuse cases pro bono, so she met my mom through it. They hit it off, like, right away, I’ve been told, so. Mom got Derek’s sister to babysit me – I was eight, I think – and she would bring Derek along. He was a grumpy asshole back then, too, but there was this one time where I sprayed Laura in the face with a super soaker and then Derek and I were best buds after that.”

            Scott’s face crinkles at the edges like he isn’t sure whether to laugh at the bit about the water gun.

            “Why’d you stop being friends?” Scott asks. His demeanour is soft, tentative; it’s how Scott gets when their conversation takes a heavy turn and he’s not sure whether to tiptoe around a subject or not. The mention of Stiles’s mom was probably Scott’s biggest cue for the tiptoeing.

            “I don’t know,” Stiles says, with a sigh. It’s true. He doesn’t know. “He met Isaac and Boyd and Erica and we just. Stopped.”

            He doesn’t want to tell Scott about the last time he’d tried to sit with Derek at lunch. He’d had news about a video game, or something stupid, and he was excited to tell Derek about it, but when he had found Derek, he was sitting with Isaac, Boyd and Erica. There had been no room for Stiles. Nobody had pulled over an extra chair. The next thing Stiles knew, Derek had joined lacrosse, gained a metric fuckton of muscle, and was ten tiers higher on the popularity food chain. He had never spared Stiles a glance once he’d reached those heights. 

            “You just drifted apart?” asks Scott.

            Stiles swallows, and nods. Scott gets it. He may not be the brightest crayon in the box, but he’s smart enough to know what to say and when to say it, or when not to say anything at all.

            “It happens. People change.”

            “Yeah. In Derek’s case he started wearing leather, working out a lot and probably listening to Skrillex or something.”

            “Probably,” Scott says, smirking. “Hey, speaking of Der—uh… things. Did you know Lydia’s having a Halloween party?”

            “I may have overheard some gossip. Why?”

            “The whole lacrosse team’s invited. Which means we’re invited, too. And Allison—”

            “Of course Allison,” Stiles interjects, nodding.

            “And Derek.”

            “Of course Derek.”

            “So will you come with me? I don’t want to go alone and look like a total dork.”

            “Oh my god, Scott, why do I always have to babysit you? And in what universe would going to a party with me make you look any cooler?”

            “You’re cool!” Scott hedges, and Stiles snorts. “Come on, Stiles. You’re always trying to drag me along to do stupid shit, why don’t you come do stupid shit with me for once?”

            “I’m already a member of the Beacon Hills lacrosse team. I don’t need to do anything stupid for another year at least.”

            “Stiiiiiles,” he whines, bouncing in his seat so he’s briefly a blur on Stiles’s screen.

            Stiles takes a deep breath. On the one hand, it’s Lydia’s party, which, he’s been told, are guaranteed to be some of the biggest and the best. On the other hand, Derek will be there, broody and stupid, with his eyebrows, and his stupid friends, and things. But Stiles does care about Scott, and his own popularity to some degree, and it’s _Lydia’s party._

Fuck.He’d given in before this conversation had even begun.

            “Is this a costume party?” Stiles asks.

 

 

***

 

            The next few weeks pass in a blur of activity and three more lacrosse games. Stiles plays the honourable role of benchwarmer at each one. The weekend before Halloween rolls around, every student at Beacon Hills High School is abuzz about Lydia’s party. There have been rumours about some of the more reputable guests, ie., the sports teams, and about the booze, and illicit activities Stiles doesn’t care about at all. Mostly Stiles is nauseated by the prospect, glancing at the Batman costume every time he sees it hanging in his closet. He had purchased it a week ago at the only comic book store in town, Galaxy Comics, where every employee knows Stiles by name.

            On Saturday night Stiles squirms into his costume. He flexes in the mirror for a few minutes before finally making his way out the door. Dad tells him not to do anything he wouldn’t do, and Stiles salutes him, and he heads out to pick up Scott and drive the fifteen minutes to Lydia’s house.

            Scott scratches anxiously at his werewolf costume with its bulky fur gloves and ugly, grimacing mask the whole way there. The costume is probably a bad idea if one wants to make a good impression on their crush, unless said crush is attracted to itchy, sweaty men. Or furries. But whatever. He’s not responsible for Scott’s poor life choices.

            They arrive at eleven thirty, just as the party is starting to kick off. Stiles slaps Scott’s hands away from his neck for the umpteenth time as they make their way up to Lydia’s front door. They ring the doorbell while a group of rowdy teens in drag join them. Lydia answers the door in a sexy nurse outfit, lips red and perfect and hair styled into a loosely retro bun. She’s gorgeous, as usual. 

            “Oh. Hey, Scott,” she says, with the barest glance in Stiles’s direction, and a bright smile at the young men behind them. “Come on in, guys!” She leaves the door open and trots off down the hall. The probably offensively dressed men fan out while Stiles and Scott try to be casual as they wander into Lydia’s wide living room.

            The living room is decorated floor-to-ceiling with fake cobwebs, hung with spiders and skeletons and lit with green and black lights. There are platters of plastic body parts strewn artfully on every available surface. The attention to detail is wholly and completely _Lydia_ , and Stiles grins so hard at her skill that his mask digs into his cheeks.

            There’s a dining room attached to the living room where the table is covered in every kind of Halloween candy and dainty imaginable. It’s _fantastic_. Through a doorway beside the dining room is the kitchen, where a majority of the guests are coagulating, either stuffing twelve packs into the fridge or taking them out, or simply mingling with one another with a drink in hand.

            Scott fetches them both a beer, and they spend at least forty-five minutes standing in a corner of the dining room, eating dainties, before Scott gasps so hard Stiles jumps. Scott grabs Stiles’s arm in an annoying way that means he’s flustered and scared and doesn’t know what to do with himself. Which can only mean—yeah, there’s Allison, striding into the living room, coming from where Stiles thinks the basement is. She’s dressed in this awesome black, lacy ensemble, with a high collared black and red cape. And, yup, those are fangs. There is something poetic and more than a little sickening about how well the costume of his best friend and the costume of the woman he’s in love with go together.

            “Wow,” Stiles says. He must say it loud enough to catch Allison’s attention, because she’s smiling brightly and walking over to their designated spot in the corner.

            “Scott?” She asks, peering at him in his mask, under which Stiles _knows_ Scott is pouring with sweat.

            “Yeah, it’s me, hi,” he says.

            “You look awesome.” Okay, Stiles can concede that Allison _is_ the sweetest girl ever, if she can look Scott in the eye in his costume and still say he looks awesome.  “You do too, Stiles,” she adds.

            “And you,” says Scott, all warmth, and Stiles is proud of Scott’s ability to at least maintain some semblance of composure under duress.

            “Would you mind if I stole him for a little bit?” Allison asks Stiles, before turning back to Scott. “I wanted to show you that CD I was telling you about. Lydia has it, too.”

            “Oh, cool,” Scott says, and he looks at Stiles for confirmation, which Stiles provides with a shooing gesture.

            “Go. I’ll mingle.” Stiles can see how happy Scott is by the brightness of his eyes through his little eyeholes. He couldn’t say no to that even if he tried. Scott follows Allison out of the living room with a bounce in his step, and Stiles feels like the best friend ever, and oddly cold without Scott beside him.

            Stiles lingers by himself for a few minutes longer, eating Reese’s from a bowl on the table. He’s antsy within minutes. There are a growing number of people filling up the living room—people who are too drunk, asking Stiles stupid questions and cornering him when he’s already on edge from the sugar.

            He’s quick to flee to the emptier entranceway of the house in search of Lydia’s basement.

            The door to the basement is in the kitchen. He sneaks past a crowd of tipsy, costumed teenagers and opens the door a crack, slipping inside. Stiles nearly tumbles down the steep staircase, barely regaining his footing at the last second. He clambers the rest of the way down to the landing. There’s a door to the left, presumably leading to a laundry room, and a spacious rec room to the right. The rec room is big enough to comfortably fit a pool table and a bar on one end and a semi-circle of couches around an enormous flat screen TV on the other. There’s hardly anyone down here except four guys Stiles recognizes from his math class playing a game of pool, and three people on the couches watching Scream at a low volume.

            One of the math guys, dressed as a fireman, nods a greeting at Stiles, who waves back. The absence of people down here is potentially even more awkward, but against his better judgment Stiles investigates the couches and finds, to his surprise, several familiar faces.

            Erica is sitting between Isaac and Boyd in a skin-tight leather outfit that emphasizes her magnificent cleavage, along with a black mask over her eyes and cat ears in her hair. Boyd is in a tattered, bloody white t-shirt and sloppy zombie makeup. Isaac is in full Ghostbusters uniform, with an actual homemade Proton pack beside him on the floor. The moment Erica spots Stiles she grins, wide and catlike.

            “Batman! We meet again!”

            “Catwoman!” he puts on his best Batman voice, and Erica and Isaac laugh. Boyd even deigns to crack a smile. Erica invites Stiles over, patting the empty spot on the couch beside her. Stiles is a bit like Batman, right then. His life may be in danger if he chooses to sit. But he sits, because he’s lonely and restless and doesn’t want to leave Scott at this party without a ride home just because he’s frustrated by his inability to chat with strangers.

            “Would you like a drink, Batman?” Erica asks, wrapping an arm around his shoulder as though they’re best friends, and she did not, in fact, steal Derek away from him.

            “Uh, sure,” says Stiles. “What’s on the menu?”

            “Whiskey,” Isaac says, picking up a half-empty bottle from the floor. He takes a swig and offers it to Stiles. Stiles decides it’s harmless – it’s just whiskey, he’s stolen whiskey from his dad plenty of times – and takes a sip that’s far too big. A drop rolls down his chin as he swallows the burning, oaky-tasting whiskey, coughing a little.

            “Slow down there, big guy,” Erica says, laughing, snagging the bottle from him, drinking with the same grace as Selina Kyle herself.

            For a while they sit watching Scream in companionable silence. While Sidney Prescott’s life unravels around her, they pass the whiskey to each other, until Stiles begins to feel hazy at the edges.

            Stiles is laughing along with Erica, Boyd and Isaac as the plot progresses, yelling at Tatum when she gets stuck in the cat door and at Randy, when he doesn’t see the killer. The three of them wince and react at all the perfect moments. By the time the movie is over, Stiles has taken off his gross-smelling mask. They’ve covered the coffee table between the three couches with candy wrappers and moved on to rums and Cokes, mixed by Boyd, and they’re all pretty thoroughly smashed.

            And Stiles just might be having fun.

            He honestly can’t say he’s felt this way in a long time, except maybe with Scott, and with Derek, before he met Scott.

            But Stiles has learned that Isaac is a closet geek, with piles of comic books stored in every crevice of his bedroom at home. He knows that Erica likes to make her own jewellery, and that Boyd is a fan of the New York Mets. They might be part of Derek’s Dick Brigade, and it could be the whiskey brightening everything, giving everyone a faintly luminescent quality, but they’re not bad people.

            Erica is resting her head on Stiles’s shoulder while Isaac and Boyd lean over them to talk to each other and it’s—well, it’s _good._

            “No, I’m serious, Derek said he’d watch it on Netflix and then we ended up watching Merlin for some reason? I swear we’ll get around to watching it, Boyd.”

            “It’s Breaking Bad! Why would you choose Merlin over Breaking Bad!”

            Derek’s name adds a drop of sobriety to Stiles’s otherwise pleasant sense of loose-limbed well-being. He doesn’t know how to react to the fact that their lives consist so heavily of Derek, while his has been deprived of it since they were freshmen.  

            “Hey, leave Merlin out of this,” says Erica.

            “Derek watches Merlin?” Stiles can’t help but ask.

            “He likes to pretend he hates it, but I know he doesn’t,” Isaac says, smirking.

            “You know what he’d _really_ like?”

            “Shut up, Boyd, I know.”

            Boyd clenches his jaw and glares at Isaac in what might have been an imposing manner if he wasn’t squinting and half-smiling from alcohol intake.

            “So, uh, what’s Derek up to these days?” Stiles asks, because his brain-to-mouth filter is defective when he’s sober, and it’s bound to be nonexistent when he’s drunk.

            “Oh _yeah_ ,” says Erica, “you guys used to be friends. I forgot about that.”

            Stiles barely restrains the urge to say, _not anymore, thanks to you,_ and only manages to keep it to himself because he’s enjoying himself too much, wedged between Erica and Isaac.

            “I don’t know, what _is_ he up to, Isaac? Last time I went to your house he had those kids crawling all over him. It was adorable. He looked like a sad golden retriever.”

            “That’s basically what life at the Hale house is. Peter’s kids are absolute terrors.” The affection in Isaac’s voice belies his words, however, and the gears in Stiles’s head start turning, slower from inebriation, before, eventually, everything clicks into place.

            “Wait. You're living with Derek?” he blurts out.

            “Hmm? Oh, yeah. I am.” The way Isaac kind of hunches inward, like he’s embarrassed, or ashamed, keeps Stiles from asking him why. Stiles has a tiny backup filter for emergencies, at least.

            “And how is Derek?” Stiles presses, instead. Isaac shrugs.

            “He’s okay. I mean he’s always been like, broody, and whatever, and after what happened with Kate he was about twelve times worse. But he’s good now, I think.”

            “Why are you asking? Do you miss him or something?” Boyd asks, leaning towards Stiles, his stare a little too probing for Stiles’s liking.

            “No, I—I don’t—who’s Kate?”

            “The most psychotic bitch in the history of psychotic bitches. Thank _god_ she’s in prison now.”

            Stiles’s brain trips over itself in its attempt to keep up.

            “Who—is she his ex?”

            “I don’t know. Maybe? I don’t even want to bring her up around him.”

            “And she’s in prison?”

            Stiles can’t believe he’s missed so much of Derek’s life over the course of two years that he’s changed from someone who was once on Stiles’s level of geekery to this leather-clad jerkass who may or may not _date women who are in prison._ It’s so much to take in that Stiles feels like he’s missed a step going up the stairs.

            “Yup,” Erica says, but she doesn’t offer any explanations as to why. And then the three of them distract themselves with another round of Boyd’s rum and Cokes, and the conversation turns to complaining about Mr. Harris’s chemistry class. Stiles is in the middle of a diatribe about the detention he received as a freshman for ‘accidentally’ shooting Harris in the back of the head with an elastic band – a detention which had led to befriending Scott – when someone steps into his line of sight. 

            In Stiles’s current state of dishevelment, the person is a mere blotch of black in the corner of his eye. He turns to see that it’s Derek, leather jacketed, the smell of the cold autumn night wafting off him. The asshole is, naturally, not wearing a costume. Unless he’s dressed as a Greaser, in which case he really didn’t try at all.

            “Nice costume, Derek,” Erica says, reading Stiles’s mind.

            “Took you long enough to get here,” Isaac admonishes. Stiles is positive they would not be giving him so much grief if they hadn’t been drinking this whole time, but unfortunately for Derek, that’s exactly what they’ve been doing. “Where have you been?” Isaac asks, while Erica gets up, takes off her cat ear headband, and places it crookedly on Derek’s head.

            “There. Beautiful.”

            Derek blinks down at Erica like he wants to challenge her, but instead he shakes his head with a hint of affection. And he _doesn’t take the ears off_. Stiles has to muffle a laugh into his fist at the sight of him. But Derek sees it, sees Stiles, his eyes lighting on him before returning his attention to Isaac.

            “I was helping mom with the pumpkins,” he says, and it’s such a mundane, _human_ thing to say that Stiles can’t keep the laughter from exploding out ofhis mouth.

            He’s been so distant from Derek for so long that somewhere along the way Stiles had stopped seeing Derek as a person. Instead Derek had become this impenetrable island surrounded by mines, so impenetrable that surely no useless tugboat sailed by Stiles could ever reach it. To hear him say he was late to a party because he was helping his mother is just, it’s so—so _not_ the Derek he’s been building up in his mind from the frayed pieces he’s seen of him at school. This is the Derek Stiles was friends with. The only difference is the muscle, and the leather, and the stubble.

            “Well, sit down, have a drink, stay a while,” Erica says, flouncing over to sit next to Boyd on the other couch, leaving her spot beside Stiles vacant. Derek huffs out a sigh, but he takes her previous spot. “I believe you know Stiles. I mean Batman. Sorry. I didn’t mean to give away your identity like that.”

            “It’s okay. The mask’s off, I’m off-duty right now,” Stiles says, and Erica grins. Derek, sitting straight-backed and uneasy beside Stiles, glances between Stiles and Erica. Clearly he doesn’t quite know what to make of their sudden truce. He does take the drink Boyd offers him, though. “How’s it going, Hale?” Stiles hears his own mouth saying, stupidly, to Derek.

            Derek stops mid-sip to raise an eyebrow at Stiles.

            “Fine?” he says, once he’s put his cup down on the coffee table in front of them.

            “Good, good, wouldn’t want an unhappy Hale on our hands,” Stiles says, flapping his own hands for emphasis.

            “Hey, so, Stiles says he misses you,” Boyd says, and wow, _fuck him_.

            “Wow, fuck you, I never said that,” Stiles says, throwing a candy wrapper at him and missing by several feet. He can feel Derek looking at him, and his already hot costume is even hotter under Derek’s scrutiny. “I was just wondering how he was doing, it’s not—it’s none—shut up,” Stiles finishes lamely.

            “But you were friends?”

            Stiles throws his hands up in the air and slams his head against the back of the couch, shoulder brushing against Derek’s. It occurs to him, briefly, that he hasn’t been this close to Derek in years—not unless one counts their frequent skirmishes in lacrosse practice, which Stiles is not.

            “We were,” Derek says, hesitant.

            “Why aren’t you friends anymore?” Erica asks. “I mean, Stiles is clearly a dork but he holds his liquor pretty well. And he has good taste in movies.”

            Derek looks as uncomfortable as Stiles feels. Possibly more so, since Stiles has sore cheeks from smiling and his blood-alcohol content is much higher. 

            “I don’t know,” Derek answers.

            “Obviously it’s because Derek became Danny Zuko. I’m, like, a backup dancer at most,” Stiles says, trying to ease the tension from Derek’s shoulders. He is unsuccessful in the endeavour; Derek is still as tense as ever.

            “You are such a dork,” Erica says, but she’s beaming, and she’s being friendlier than she’s been to Stiles since they met. To be fair, the last thing she’d said to Stiles was, “Mind your own business, Stilinski.”

            “I try,” he says.

            There’s a long, slightly awkward pause, during which there’s a shout and a heavy thump upstairs, and someone turns up the stereo. The bass pummels against the floor above them.

            “Oh my god, I love this song,” shouts Erica. She jumps up to shove her bare feet into black pumps and snags Isaac and Boyd by the hands. “You two are dancing with me whether you like it or not.”

            She drags them both off, Isaac shooting a hilariously terrified expression at Derek and Stiles as they turn the corner and trundle up the stairs. Stiles realizes only then that the guys playing pool are gone, and he is alone in the basement with Derek.

            “Uh. Does she do that a lot?”

            “All the time,” Derek says, with what might be a laugh if he were a normal human being, but to Stiles it sounds like a bizarre sigh. Stiles goes right ahead and swipes Derek’s glass from the table, drinking deep, since he finished his own drink fifteen minutes ago. He’s reached a point in his inebriation that he doesn’t even really notice the taste of alcohol anymore. It’s a lot easier to chug half of it down in one fell swoop, slamming down with such zest it splashes over the table. He hopes the wood isn’t as expensive as it looks.

            “That is _mahogany_!” he mutters to himself, giggling. Boyd definitely put more rum in Derek’s Coke than Stiles’s.

            “And that is my drink,” Derek says, either not catching the reference, or not caring, as he scoops the drink up and finishes it off.

            “Any drink on that table is free game for me.” Stiles decides to hell with it, this awkwardness is not getting them anywhere, and it’s ruining his buzz. He sprawls out across the couch, his back against the armrest. He plants his feet firmly in Derek’s lap. “The candy is also free game. Even though I… may have eaten it all.”

            “Booze _and_ sugar,” Derek says, choking on air. “How much have you had?”

            “Uh,” Stiles says. He’s lost count. Boyd is _really good_ at plying people with alcohol. “A lot?”

            “Did you drive here?”

            “Yeah, but Scott and I decided if we’re drunk we’ll just, like, sleep in my Jeep. Or Lydia’s yard. Whatever.”

            Derek rolls his eyes at him and drops a hand on his ankle as though he doesn’t quite know what to do with his limbs, with Stiles on top of him.

            “Where’s Scott now?”

            “Oh, he’s off singing and dancing with woodland creatures with Allison.”

            “Allison? Allison Argent?” Derek’s ever-present frown deepens, his hand tightening around Stiles’s ankle.

            “That’s the one. She’s nice,” he says, still trying fruitlessly to loosen Derek up. There’s a brief pause, as Stiles studies Derek through hazy eyes. He says, abruptly, “Why _did_ we stop being friends, Derek?”

            Nope. The tension is not going away any time soon.

            “I really don’t know,” Derek says, quietly. His finger, unexpectedly, begins to trace circles into the skin under the hem of Stiles’s pants. “We just stopped.”

            Stile thinks, again, of the table in the cafeteria without a chair designated for him. He thinks of how angry he’d been about their fading friendship, how he had spun in the opposite direction and stormed away to sit at a table by himself. He had spent lunchtime alone. He had wanted a reaction from someone, wanted to take his rage out on _someone_ , so he had shot an elastic band at the back of Harris’s head. Stiles remembers detention after school that day. It was when he’d first talked to Scott, the new kid who had forgotten to do his chemistry homework.

            Stiles knows exactly why he and Derek had stopped talking—but he won’t say why, because it’s been his fault all along. 

            “Well, you know what, Derek?” Stiles says, with a heat behind his words that he isn’t expecting. Derek isn’t expecting it either, if his tentative response is anything to go by.

            “What?”

            “We didn’t stop. I think you’re secretly my friend right now,” Stiles says, struggling to sit up to poke Derek in the cheek. Derek shakes him off, staring down at him with a strange, unreadable expression. Stiles’s heart gives a nervous flutter, and the world spins around him, giving him butterflies, as he flops onto his back again. “And I’m your friend, too, so fuck you.”

            Stiles shuts his eyes, a smile in place. And five seconds later Derek shoves him off the couch onto the floor, where Stiles loses track of where the ceiling and walls are supposed to be and gets trapped in his cape. When he divests himself from the tangle of fabric enough to sit up, Derek is smirking at him, way too self-satisfied.  

            “You’re too drunk to be making those kinds of decisions,” Derek says.

            “Whatever, I make better decisions than half the people here when they’re _sober_.”

            “Is it sad that I agree with you?”

            Stiles disentangles himself from his cape enough to stand, only to step on the end of it. The alcohol rises to his head at the same time. All Stiles can do to save himself from concussing himself on the corner of the coffee table is to fall directly into Derek’s lap.

            Yeah, that was totally intentional. Stiles is a graceful swan. He squints up at Derek with a casual, “Uh, hi, how’s it goin’?”

            The look Derek gives him is a mix between irritation and confusion, and a tiny pinch of humour. Stiles doesn’t know whether he should move away or not. Instead he remains perched across Derek’s thighs with an arm over his shoulder. And it’s cozy. But they used to have sleepovers together, so really, this isn’t anything new. Except for the muscles. Those are new.

            Stiles figures he should get acquainted with the muscles while he’s here, and takes to squeezing Derek’s biceps for an inappropriate amount of time before Derek clears his throat.

            “Good? Is it going good?” Stiles prods, and Derek raises his eyebrows towards his hairline in exasperation.

            “It’s going fine,” Derek says, voice a little breathier than Stiles remembers, but maybe that’s because he’s sitting too close, where he can feel said breath on his cheek.

            “How’s Laura?”

            “You are the worst drunk, Stiles,” Derek says, exasperated. “She graduated from NYU last year.”

            “Oh yeah! She works at Starbucks now, doesn’t she?”

            “Just until she can find a job that suits her degree.”

            “Cool. She was majoring in history, right?”

            “You remember that?”

            “I have a very good verbal memory,” Stiles says, grinning, realizing belatedly he’s still squeezing Derek’s biceps. He stops squeezing but doesn’t let go. “What about Isaac? I hear he’s living with you?”

            “My parents are fostering him. He wasn’t safe living with his dad.”

            Stiles feels a rush of guilt, once again, for leaving Derek. He’d pictured Derek in such a negative light since the cafeteria, and it hadn’t even occurred to him that Derek might actually _care_ about these people. Or that these people, and Isaac, especially, needed someone like Derek in their lives. Stiles hates himself a little bit for it.

            “That’s pretty awesome of you guys,” he says, quietly, looking down at his hand where it’s resting on Derek’s arm.

            “We have lots of room for him,” Derek says. After a beat he adds, “Are you gonna get off me any time soon?”

            “Oh, yeah, no, I’m good right here.”

            Stiles promptly ends up on the floor again, laughing this time, and Derek laughs too, and Stiles feels like he’s floating when he sees it.

            “I see you’re still an asshole!” Stiles shouts. In a blink Derek is manhandling Stiles to his feet and throwing him over his shoulder like he weighs nothing. “Ooh, Mister Darcy!” Stiles crows, all the blood rushing to his head, making him hysterical at his own joke, and at the situation he’s found himself in. He is suddenly very intimate with Derek’s backside—so he gropes at it, because it’s there.

            “Stop it, Stiles, I’m taking you home,” Derek says from somewhere behind him. Under him. Whatever.

            “Wait! No! Stop!” Stiles says, panicking, grabbing Derek’s ass so hard he can feel it twitch under his hand. “Scott! And—my mask!”

            “I got it,” Derek says, bending briefly, making Stiles’s world spin again, before he is moving across the room with Stiles dangling off his shoulder, trudging his way up the stairs without even slowing down.

            “Why are you taking me home? I’m having _fun_.” 

            “Because you stink of alcohol.”

            “That’s what you do at parties, Derek. You get stinky.”

            “Yeah, and you’re doing a great job at that. I’m taking you home.”  

            The noise level increases tenfold when Derek reaches the top of the stairs. Stiles can hear people laughing and cheering at him, or Derek, or maybe something else entirely, he has no idea. There’s the bass of some Paramore song and voices everywhere, but all Stiles can see from his vantage point is the floor and everything below Derek’s waist. When they reach the front of the house, Derek stops to talk to someone.

            “Have any of you seen Scott?” Derek asks.

            “I think he was sitting in a corner with Allison a while ago,” says Isaac over the music’s heavy bass. “And can I just say, Scott’s costume is _really unrealistic._ ” 

            “Shut up. Is Stiles still conscious?”

            “Surprisingly, yes. I’m taking him home. Can one of you guys make sure Scott has a ride?”

            “No need. I heard him asking Lydia if he could sleep on her couch,” says Erica. “She seemed okay with it, as long as, I quote, ‘he didn’t drool, vomit, or leave any kind of permanent stains on the upholstery.’ Apparently it’s ‘genuine leather!’” Erica’s impression of Lydia is so spot-on it would scare Stiles if his blood weren’t so full of liquor. As it is it just has him laughing into the back of Derek’s jacket.

            “Good. I’ll talk to you guys later.”

            Stiles raises his head to wave at Erica and Isaac, who wave back at him with identical grins which clearly state that Stiles is the most awesome guy around. Derek steps outside, and the cold air hits Stiles’s flushed skin like an icy tidal wave. He swears under his breath. Derek ignores him and carries him out to his car, dropping Stiles unceremoniously across the back seat once he gets there. Stiles has to take a moment to get his bearings before he can sit up—and by that time, Derek’s already pulled out of his parking spot and started driving.

            “When did you get the Camaro?” Stiles asks, lying back down because the motion of the car is making everything spin even more.

            “My parents got it for me when I got my licence. I’ll kill you if you throw up.”

            “I’m good, I’m good,” he promises, keeping his eyes trained on the seat in front of him, hoping he can keep his promise. Stiles pulls out his cell phone to type out a message to Scott, his fingers clumsy on the keys.

 

            _Scott grok derek is drubs then me home against my silk_

 

            Stiles curses autocorrect, but sends it anyway. Maybe Scott will be able to translate it. He receives a text back a few minutes later.

 

            _What?_

 

            “Fuck,” he mutters, typing more carefully a second time. It takes at least ten minutes of battling against autocorrect before it’s even slightly legible. 

 

            _scott Derek is drving mehome agiasit my will help_

 

            Derek is turning onto Stiles’s street when he gets a text back:

 

            _Hahahaha you are so drunk_

“Thank you, Scott, that was enlightening,” Stiles says, pocketing his phone. Derek pulls into his driveway, where Stiles’s house is mercifully dark and the driveway empty. Derek shuts off the car and gets out, opening the door beside Stiles’s head. He then does something truly terrifying. He reaches over Stiles and begins to prod at his hips.

            “Hey there, buddy, that’s some pretty inappropriate touching,” he says. Derek ignores him yet again, probing his pockets and, what the fuck, his ass, before he sticks his hand in one of Stiles’s pockets and retrieves Stiles’s keys.

            “After what you just put me through, I think I deserve to cop a feel or two,” Derek says, striding away. Stiles nearly rips his cape in his attempt to escape Derek’s car, finally stumbling his way out, shutting the door. He catches up to Derek on his porch, where he’s figuring out which key is which, Stiles’s Batman mask held securely under one arm. He eventually finds it and lets Stiles in. Derek remembers where the light switches are from when they were kids, and he’s kind enough to turn them on.

            “Come on.” Derek closes and locks the door behind them, leading Stiles up the stairs to his own bedroom. Annoyed at Derek’s impudence, Stiles slaps Derek’s ass again, because again, it’s _right there_. The glare of death Derek shoots over his shoulder sends Stiles into another round of giggles.

            Once they reach Stiles’s bedroom Stiles is punched in the chest with how exhausted he is, probably from all the laughing and falling over and ass groping. He immediately collapses, face-first, into his bed. He hears Derek sigh from somewhere near the doorway.

            “I’m getting you a glass of water. You better be out of that costume when I get back.”

            “You’re a real charmer,” Stiles mutters, but Derek’s already gone. Stiles has to pee anyway, though. He squirms halfway out of his Batman pants and gets rid of the cape before stumbling down the hall to relieve himself. Derek is sitting on the chair beside his bed when Stiles returns, frowning at him. Frowning, no doubt, at his inability to undress himself.

            “I draw the line at helping you take your clothes off,” Derek says.

            “I wasn’t gonna ask!” Stiles says, whiny even to his own ears. He peels off the rest of his outfit until he’s left standing unsteadily in the middle of the room in only his boxers. “Better?”

            Derek’s eyes fall on him from where they were staring distantly at the open closet behind Stiles. He looks for a moment like a deer in headlights, and Stiles—well, he feels suddenly naked. And he is, for the most part, in just his boxers and his socks. His bareness did not even occur to him until Derek’s eyes rake up Stiles’s body and he blinks at Stiles like he’s just snapped out of a daydream.

            Derek gets up, taking a glass of water off of Stiles’s desk. He thrusts it at Stiles.

            “Drink,” he grunts. He walks Stiles over his bed, sits him down, and seats himself beside the bed again. Stiles drinks. He drinks it all, the room silent except for the slosh of water and the click of Stiles’s throat as he swallows. Once he’s done, Derek takes the glass from him. “Now get in bed.”

            “You are the most demanding mother hen of all time,” Stiles grouses, but he crawls under the blankets anyway. Derek actually tucks him in, dragging the comforter up to Stiles’s chin, and Stiles can’t help but snicker into the pillow at the image. He didn’t think Derek would care enough to even come into the house with him. This is too much. He must be dreaming. “So, like, is this real life?” he asks.

            “Yes, it’s real life,” Derek says. He smiles down at Stiles, and Stiles is definitely dreaming. He’s sure he imagined the _fondness_ crinkling the corners of Derek’s eyes.

            “Mm, okay, good night,” Stiles murmurs, sleepiness catching up to him, throttling his eyelids closed. The light switches off, and the sparkling darkness behind Stiles’s eyelids careens and dances. “God, Derek, I missed you.”

            He’s not even sure Derek’s still there when he says it, because he doesn’t hear a response. Instead, a floorboard creaks outside his bedroom. He falls asleep with a stupid smile on his face as the door snicks shut.

 

***

 

            Stiles’s bedroom is way too bright when he wakes up the next morning. There’s a dull throbbing behind his left eye and his mouth is a dumpster, but at least he’s alive. He’s had worse mornings after stealing his dad’s whiskey, or after failed attempts at enjoying parties with a bunch of people he doesn’t know. He guesses the difference this time is he had fun. And, okay, maybe because he had someone coddling him grumpily and putting him to bed. Maybe.

            He hadn’t drunk that much, either. He remembers everything. They aren’t high-definition memories, but he knows he spent the whole time in Lydia’s basement with Erica, Isaac and Boyd. And he suffers a hitch of mortification when he flashes back to all the things he did and said to Derek when his three henchmen had run upstairs to dance.

            Stiles gives a start and sits up suddenly in his bed when he remembers his Jeep is still parked in front of Lydia’s house. His skull pulsates, and he mutters, “shit,” under his breath.

            There’s a knock on the door just as he’s stumbling out of bed, searching the floor for jeans, finding nothing but a dishevelled Batman costume.

            “Yeah?”

            Dad enters, getting ready for bed after his long night shift and dressed in a worn grey t-shirt and plaid sweat pants. There’s a perplexed line between his eyebrows, too. For once he’s wearing the expression _before_ he sees Stiles, as he leans against the doorjamb.

            “Derek Hale is at the door?” he says. It comes out like a question. “I know it’s been a while, but can you tell me why he’s dressing like a juvenile delinquent now? He’s not here to sell you anything illegal, is he?”

            “What? No!” Stiles eventually finds a pair of jeans and bounces his way into them, regretting the movement immediately when his head gives an almighty throb. “No, we’re just—I don’t know. Sort of friends again, I guess? I mean, Derek’s in lacrosse. Stiles is in lacrosse…”

            “Oh, well, that’s a relief,” says Dad. “He’s waiting for you downstairs.”

            “Did he say why?”

            “Something about your Jeep?”

            “Gotcha,” Stiles says, snapping off a salute. Dad gives him the tired smile he reserves for Stiles alone and shuffles down the hall towards his bedroom. Stiles digs around for clothes that don’t smell like he hasn’t done the laundry in two weeks, finally coming up with a clean-ish shirt and red plaid button-up, and a thick hoodie to wear in case it’s cold outside. He washes up quickly in the bathroom and jogs down the stairs.

            Derek is waiting for him near the front door with a grande Starbucks cup in each hand.

            “Did you bring me _coffee_?” Stiles exclaims.

            “I thought you might need it after last night,” he says, holding one out to him. Stiles snatches it from Derek like a starved wild animal, sniffs it, and takes a long sip.

            He has no idea how, but Derek knows what he likes. Not even Scott knows what he likes. Hell, not even Laura does, and she _works_ at Starbucks. The rich, sharp flavour of Americano is exactly what Stiles needs to take the edge off his hangover. He takes a second greedy sip and moans with delight.

            Stiles realizes Derek’s staring at him and has to fight a losing battle to regain his composure. Stiles runs his fingers through his hair in some caricature of normalcy, only to find that it’s sticking up on one side from sleeping on it.

            “What’s this about my Jeep?” he asks, traitorous cheeks flushing.

            “You left it at Lydia’s, didn’t you? I’ll drive you over there.”

            Stiles gapes at Derek, open-mouthed, for such a long moment that Derek, winner of every staring contest ever, is the first to look away for what must be the first time in his life.

            “Why? It’s not like you owe me anything. You just—took care of a drunken Stiles. Actually, you didn’t have to look after me at all.”

            Derek rolls his eyes and reverts back to his trademark glare-frown combo.

            “Well, I did, and now I’m driving you to pick up your Jeep. So get. In. The car.”

            “God! Fine!” Stiles storms out of the front door, giving Derek no choice but to follow after him and close the front door behind them. Stiles throws himself into the passenger seat, clutching his coffee like a lifeline as Derek joins him. They sit in silence until Derek turns on to Main Street, and Stiles can’t keep quiet any longer.

            “How did you know I like Americano?” he asks. Derek doesn’t look at him, but Stiles sees a muscle in his jaw flex.

            “My sister works at Starbucks. Remember?”

            “Americano is not the only thing I order at Starbucks.”

            “Then I could’ve gotten you a caramel macchiato and you would’ve liked that, too.”

            “No,” Stiles continues, inexplicably frustrated with the quickly fraying thread of this conversation, “but Americano is my _favourite._ ”

            “I don’t know, Stiles, maybe I was at Starbucks and saw you order it.”

            “Then why didn’t you say ‘hi’?”

            “What?” Derek glances at him, searching Stiles’s face, because Stiles must sound angry if the painful beat of his heart is any indication of the hangover-induced flux of his emotions.

            “I said, why didn’t you say ‘hi’?”

            “Maybe I didn’t think you’d wanted to see me? The way we left off—”

            “What do you mean, ‘the way we left off’? You le—you’re the one who joined your new little gang of friends! I wasn’t cool enough for the Dick Brigade! No Stileses allowed in the Leather Jacket Club!”

            “Jesus, Stiles, quit it with the stupid names,” Derek snarls. He seems to think better of his anger, because he takes a deep breath before continuing. “You seemed to be getting along just fine with the Leather Jacket Club yesterday. But I—I assumed you didn’t want to hang out with me once you started sitting with Scott. I don’t know. I thought it was mutual.”

            “Well, it wasn’t.” Stiles knows he’s being childish, and stupid, and holding himself together about as well as a preteen girl, but he gives Derek the silent treatment all the way to Lydia’s. It’s only when Derek comes to a stop behind Stiles’s Jeep that he realizes he doesn’t have his keys. He’s groping through his pockets, cursing loudly, when Derek holds them out to him.

            Oh. Derek had them all night. Good to know.

            He snags them away, pissed at Derek for being so annoyingly thoughtful when all Stiles wants to do is punch him.

            “Thanks for the coffee,” Stiles says, taking it and the keys with him. Stiles slams the door without listening for Derek’s response, if there were any. Derek hits the gas and screeches off down the road before Stiles can even see what expression he’s wearing.

            It’s probably a frown.

 

***

 

            Stiles spends the rest of his Sunday in a horrible mood, taking it out on the stupid fucking Cerberus soldiers in Mass Effect 3.

            For some reason, since this morning, he’s wanted to know what Derek’s favourite coffee is, and it pisses him off that he forgot to ask. The fact it pisses him off pisses him off even more. He shouldn’t _care_ this much about someone who isn’t even in his life anymore. But apparently Derek is squeezing his way back into his life, bit by bit. Stiles shoots and shoots at the eight billion enemies in his game. He kills virtual enemies all day. He doesn’t feel any better when he saves the Krogans, saves his game, and goes to bed.

            He dreams about Americano and the sweet-spicy aroma of cinnamon.

 

***

 

            Stiles’s mood hasn’t improved at all by Monday. In his second period economics class he finds his designated spot beside Scott taken by none other than Allison herself. When Scott sees Stiles come in he pleads with Stiles in Pathetic Bastard Morse Code, which consists mostly of eyelash fluttering and lip quivering. Stiles wants to be angry with him. He can’t muster anything but a dirty look after he’s seen the way Scott and Allison smile at each other as though they’re the only two people in the world.

            Stiles gives Scott two mildly sarcastic thumbs up. He sits at a free desk in the back. And, yeah, _of fucking course_ Derek sits at the back, right in front of the only vacant seat. Derek doesn’t spare Stiles a glance, too busy thumbing at his cell phone to notice Stiles as he sits down. When Finstock rushes into the room a minute later, snapping at them all to shut the hell up, Stiles reaches a decision. If Mass Effect couldn’t relieve his pent-up resentment, maybe Derek can.

            Stiles kicks both his legs out and knocks them against the back legs of Derek’s chair. The class has already begun by then, and Derek doesn’t react. Stiles waits another ten minutes before he does it again. Derek’s hand jolts across the page of his notebook, but he keeps on acting like Stiles doesn’t exist. Stiles kicks at the back of Derek’s chair on and off for the next hour until he’s pleased to see Derek’s hackles rising, his shoulders up to his ears.

            It’s a job well done, in Stiles’s opinion, even when Finstock stops mid-lecture to say, “Stilinski, if you don’t stop kicking that man’s chair I will not stop him when he tries to maim you. In fact, it will give me a special kind of pleasure when he does.”

            Stiles flees the classroom the instant the bell rings, to avoid said maiming, but he isn’t fast enough. He’s barely rounded the corner when he finds himself being slammed against a locker, familiar hands clenched in the front of his hoodie.

            “What do you want from me, Stiles?” Derek demands, nostrils flaring, every muscle so clenched it has to hurt. There’s a catcall from someone down the hall, but they’re both too busy glaring daggers at each other to care. “Do you want an apology? You want me to say I’m sorry that we drifted apart, like normal people do?”

            “God, I don’t know! Yeah! Maybe!”

            “Fuck, Stiles! I’m sorry!” He shoves Stiles even harder against the locker, his ears reddening, and Stiles’s spine grinds against the metal of the locker. “Did that make you feel any better?”

            “Nope. Still want to punch you.”

            “Will punching me make you feel better?”

            Stiles breathes out, shakily.

            “Probably not.”

            They both jump at the sudden ear-splitting shriek of the bell behind them, signalling the start of third period. Derek straightens the rumpled front of Stiles’s hoodie and drops his hands back to his sides. The unexpected gentleness of his hands on Stiles’s hoodie disproves the frustration in Derek’s pinched lips. With the ghost of Derek’s warmth still on him, Stiles finds the boiling guilt and anger cooling in his belly.

            Stiles grins at him, sudden and wide and devious, and reaches up to ruffle Derek’s perfectly styled hair. Once Stiles is done it looks like Derek was either stuck in a hurricane or having really rough sex, or both at the same time. Derek’s confused eyebrows and tight lips make it even more worthwhile.

            “There. Better.”

            And Stiles sprints away to English class, cackling like the mentally deranged.

 

***

 

            Later in the evening, Stiles adds Derek on Facebook again. Stiles had felt particularly betrayed one night years ago and deleted him as a friend, only to regret it within seconds. He had been too ashamed to add him back, until now.

            Derek makes the fatal error of accepting his friend request.

            Stiles spends the next two hours serenading Derek via capslock and Queen lyrics, posting cute animal videos and Disney songs from YouTube, and linking him to anger management websites. When he’s finished, Derek’s wall is crowded with nothing but posts by Stiles Stilinski.

            Laura Hale likes every single one. 

 

***

 

            During their next economics class, Stiles plays basketball with tiny balls of paper and the little gap at the neck of Derek’s shirt. It fills Stiles with glee to see how high Derek raises his shoulders in irritation. Stiles continues on the same thread of obnoxiousness in lacrosse practice every day after school. He purposely throws the ball into the stadium instead of passing it to Derek, and any time Derek gets near him on the field, Stiles takes to swatting him in the ass with his crosse. Finstock, meanwhile, is sporadically proud of Stiles’s newfound enthusiasm for the game and furious at his blatant disregard for his drills.

            After almost a week of torturing Derek in class, lacrosse, and online, Stiles is sitting at home scrolling through TVtropes when he receives a text from a number he doesn’t recognize.

 

            _ok. you’ve pestered your way back into my life. now what?_

Stiles laughs, fist pumping the air, then types out his exuberant response.

 

            _Movies at my place this saturday? Scott’s coming. You can bring your stupid friends if you want._

            Stiles Googles the origin of the phrase ‘beat around the bush’ while he waits, because it’s always sounded vaguely dirty to him and he’s curious. Just when he’s been disappointed by the lack of dirtiness his phone chimes from where he placed it beside his laptop. He flings it onto the floor in his hurry to read it. When he finally scoops his phone up and reads Derek’s text, the relief he feels when he sees the words _yeah, I’ll bite. what time?,_ is beyond embarrassing. 

 

***

 

            Stiles has purchased Mountain Dew, Pepsi and Dr. Pepper and every kind of junk food under the sun by nine o’clock on Saturday. He’s just finished stockpiling everything in the living room, and his dad’s paying the pizza man for two large pizzas when Scott arrives with his copy of Nightmare on Elm Street.

            “Hey, Scott, nice to see you,” Dad says, letting him in as the pizza man departs. Not for the first time his dad talks to Scott like he wishes Scott was his son rather than Stiles. He levels Stiles with his best no-bullshit-or-I’ll-pistol-whip-your-ass stare, adding a pointed finger for effect. “Stiles. I better not come back to a burned down house, or hear any noise complaints, or you’re grounded. Got it?”

            “Yeah, Dad, I got it.”

            Dad lowers his finger, but the threatening look stays.

            “I’m still not entirely convinced Derek isn’t a criminal,” he begins, and Stiles opens his mouth in outrage while Scott snorts behind him. “So I’m going to meet these friends of his before I go to work, and I better not get even a _whiff_ of criminal intent.”

            “Dad, seriously, he just wears a leather jacket. _You_ _have_ a leather jacket!”

            “Which I haven’t worn since I was in my twenties. When I was a delinquent.”

            Stiles throws his hands up in the air and is about to argue when the doorbell rings right beside them. Scott, who is clearly reaping far too much pleasure from Stiles’s plight, answers it for them. Much to Stiles’s surprise, Derek is at the door with all three of his friends. There’s even a Tupperware container of chocolate chip cookies in Isaac’s hand.

            “Oh, uh, hey, guys, come on in,” Stiles says. They oblige him under the Sheriff’s watchful eye. “Guys, this is my dad. Dad, this is Isaac, Boyd and Erica.”

            He points to them all in turn. Stiles doesn’t miss the way Dad provides the ghost of a smile to Isaac. It occurs to Stiles that maybe they crossed paths once or twice before Isaac started living with the Hales. If Stiles is lucky he’ll let Isaac off with a warning.

            “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Stilinski,” says Boyd, holding out his hand to shake, and either he’s more awkward than Stiles thought or just really stupid. But his dad actually looks a little impressed as he takes it, and shakes it, and Erica smiles sweetly behind Boyd.

            “Would that make you Vernon Boyd? Of Boyd Antiques?” asks his dad.

            “My dad’s Vernon Boyd the Third, yeah,” Boyd says, abashed. Stiles wants to comment on how Vernon is _almost_ as bad as his own first name, but he manages last minute to bite his tongue. His dad ends up shaking Erica’s hand, too. The introductions go surprisingly well considering his dad is wearing his uniform and a gun on his hip like a thinly veiled threat.

            “I made cookies,” says Isaac, shyly, holding up his container. It is totally a peace offering. “Derek’s cousins helped.”

            “I think you mean ‘poisoned,’” says Derek, smirking.

            “Save a few for me,” says Dad, shooting Stiles a look, daring him to comment. “I’m off for the night. I better not hear about any illegal activities going on in my house while I’m away. Knowing my son, he’ll be the instigator.” And with that he’s going out the front door. Stiles breathes only when the door’s been shut behind him. The fact his dad thinks Stiles is more predisposed to a life of crime than Derek’s friends is, somehow, a huge relief.

            “Right,” he says, clapping his hands together. “Sorry about that. We’ve got food and drinks in the living room, and like, hundreds of movies, so.”

            He leads them into the living room where the food is piled around the lumpy old couch, loveseat and armchair in front of the TV. They all sit down and begin a half-hour long argument over what they should watch first. They choose Inglourious Basterds,since it’s not late enough for horror by Stiles’s standards, regardless of Scott’s insistence that it’s _always_ time for horror. When Stiles finds out he and Derek are the only ones who have seen Inglourious Basterds, he shouts in dismay and immediately shoves the disk into the DVD player.  

            Isaac and Scott appear to be bonding on the loveseat while Boyd, Erica and Derek take the couch. Stiles doles out pizza, drinks and chips and they overdose on junk food, chatting on and off through the first movie, occasionally throwing chips and gummy bears at each other’s mouths.

            Once they’ve finished the first movie and started up Nightmare on Elm Street the night dissolves into sugar-fuelled absurdity.

            At one point Erica instigates a tickle fight with Boyd, which causes Stiles to realize they _definitely_ have a thing for each other. Isaac and Scott are meanwhile _cuddling_ on the loveseat, with Isaac halfway in Scott’s lap. They had discovered their friendship through lacrosse and now, apparently, it has been solidified through spooning. They clutch at each other and provide fake whimpers any time something scary happens in Nightmare on Elm Street, and it’s pretty much the best night since Lydia’s Halloween party.

            The atmosphere is lucent and warm. It reminds Stiles of when he and Derek and Laura would sit in this very room, playing Crazy Eights on the coffee table, or wrestling like idiots, or just watching TV late into the night, as they are now.

            Eventually Stiles gets restless, just sitting in the armchair staring at the screen or watching for the audience’s reactions. He’s sitting there, nibbling gummy bears from a giant bag, and notes how Derek seems pretty vulnerable on the couch with his arms crossed.

            Stiles lobs a red gummy bear in Derek’s direction. It smacks him neatly in the cheek and falls into the opening of his Henley, right where it’s unbuttoned.

            Stiles always loves a good game of Shirt Basketball.

            He tosses another at him, only for it to hit the back of the couch beside Boyd. Boyd’s smile is encouraging. Stiles licks the next gummy bear before he throws it at Derek, and this time it sticks to his collar and slides into his shirt.

            “Are you serious right now?” Derek asks. Stiles laughs. Licks and throws another one. Scores.

            “I am always serious,” Stiles deadpans, popping a gummy bear into his mouth. Derek takes it as a challenge. He gets up out of his spot and all Stiles can do is shriek in the manliest possible way as he’s tackled to the floor like this is just another game of lacrosse. The movie is completely forgotten as Stiles hugs the bag of gummy bears to his stomach and curls around it. “You can’t have them! They’re mine!” he yells through bouts of laughter. Derek sits on his hip, squeezing more laughter out of Stiles, yanking at his arms with a freakish amount of strength.

            “Noooooo!” Stiles screams, digging a hand into the bag to collect as many gummy bears into his fist as he can. Derek rolls him onto his back, wrenches the bag free and throws it with a heavy _thump_ into the wall. Derek is now sitting on his stomach, red-faced and breathing hard. Stiles uses the opportunity to shove his fistful of gummy bears down the front of Derek’s shirt.

            Derek pins Stiles’s wrists to the floor with a growl. Without the gummy bears between them, Stiles is just lying there, panting, with Derek on top of him. It makes Stiles abruptly hyperaware of his own body, and the many functions that occur when there is an attractive human being sitting on top of him. Stiles’s abdomen tingles when Derek licks his lips. Oh, god, what the hell, he’s looking at Derek’s lips.

            Somebody clears their throat, and Stiles and Derek turn their heads in unison to find Erica snapping pictures of them with her phone while Boyd has his face in his hands, either from laughing or from extreme second-hand embarrassment. Scott and Isaac have identical grins on their faces.

            Derek climbs off Stiles as though he’s been burned, and Stiles chokes on a laugh when all the gummy bears stay inside Derek’s too-tight shirt like he has dozens of misshapen nipples. Derek immediately flees to the bathroom to clean himself off.

            Stiles rearranges himself in his jeans as surreptitiously as he can as he retrieves a blanket and wraps it around himself to hide his massively inconvenient boner. He sits on the floor rather than his armchair, leaning against the couch beside Boyd.

            Derek returns a few minutes later, shirt no longer protruding with gummy bears. He sits right beside Stiles on the couch. Stiles swallows, still aware of the fact that he was just, minutes ago, turned on by Derek’s body on his. They go back to watching the movie, and Stiles’s erection, mercifully, dwindles enough that he doesn’t need to sit in a tight fetal position anymore.

            When Stiles leans back to look at Derek upside-down near the end of the movie he finds Derek’s eyes already on him. The expression on his face is as unidentifiable as the grey-green-brown colour of his eyes, eyes that are half-closed, content. His posture is nowhere near as stiff as it is at school. It’s kind of awesome to know he was the reason Derek Hale finally pulled the stick out of his ass.

            Stiles saw him this way all the time when they were kids, but lately – he thinks probably since that Kate girl did something to him – Derek’s been like a guitar string wound too tight. The desire to unwind him, to keep Derek unwound, is so strong it’s a palpable ache in Stiles’s midsection.

            It’s past midnight when Stiles sticks in The Breakfast Club like an afterthought, like the last soothing song before bedtime. Isaac falls asleep twenty minutes in, arms wrapped around the bottom half of Scott’s body and his face buried in Scott’s hip. They both lie curled up on the tiny loveseat in the most intimate position possible considering they haven’t even known each other for more than a few months. Scott seems to be on the cusp of dozing off, too.

            Boyd and Erica are mumbling and giggling quietly behind him with their heads close together. Stiles rolls his head to the side again to look up at Derek again. Derek is as sleepy and full of brightness and sugar as Stiles feels. He turns around to rest his chin on the lower part of Derek’s thigh.

            “I was wrong. Your friends aren’t all that stupid.”

            A corner of Derek’s mouth twitches.

            “Thanks. I think.”

            “No, seriously. This was awesome. We should do it more often.”

            “Yeah.”

            Stiles returns his focus to the movie, still wrapped in his blanket with his head tilted onto Derek’s leg. He lets his eyes slip shut. He doesn’t realize he’s fallen asleep until he wakes to somebody’s fingers carding through his hair and stroking designs into the back of his neck. He curls closer to those lovely hands, mutters, “I don’t care how grumpy you are, you’re the best guy ever,” and falls asleep again in seconds to the sound of the Breakfast Club kids wreaking havoc in the library.

 

***

 

            There are pictures of him drooling on Derek’s leg on Erica’s Facebook the next day. Derek is asleep in most of them, a hand on Stiles’s head. He’s awake and frowning murderously at the camera in others. Stiles flushes when they appear on his feed, and a hiccup of laughter escapes him. The laughter only worsens when he sees photos of Scott and Isaac wrapped around each other, and of Derek and him wrestling on the floor.

            “I’m not even gonna ask,” Dad says from downstairs. Stiles falls out of his chair and bangs his knee on the desk, he’s laughing so hard.

            Laura likes the posts, because of course she does.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Derek are childhood friends who drifted apart. When Stiles joins the lacrosse team against his will, the universe (with a little help from Laura and Lydia) chooses to push them back together.

            Derek is back to being stony-faced and reserved once they’re back at school. He gives Stiles cursory greetings in the classes they share, but when Stiles prods Derek for news about his day, he just shrugs, or grunts, or else doesn’t acknowledge Stiles at all. Stiles takes to kicking the back of Derek’s chair again. It doesn’t emit a single reaction. Stiles and Scott sit with Derek and his friends during lunch, and even then the only conversations Derek has are telepathic ones with his chicken Caesar wrap.

            Actually, Stiles the first time Stiles sees Derek react to the world around him is when Allison comes by to say ‘hello’ to everyone and talk to Scott. His lips thin to a line when he sees her. The whole time Allison’s there, Derek sits beside Stiles, glowering across the table at her. It’s like he’s daring her to make a wrong move—about to lunge across the table if she does. Which she wouldn’t. Because she is Allison, the nicest person in the universe.

            It’s Lydia who Derek should look out for. Stiles hasn’t searched the cafeteria for her strawberry blonde hair in a while, actually. But she’s on the other side of the cafeteria now, arguing prettily with Jackson in her usual spot. Stiles’s head snaps back to Derek before his stomach has a chance to somersault at the sight of Lydia, and still Derek is glaring at Allison. Derek has been doing it long enough that it’s garnered notice from the rest of the table. Isaac is eyeing Derek nervously, a wounded puppy awaiting its next beating. Erica and Boyd have stopped talking to each other, and are watching Scott and Allison with identical grimaces.

            Christ. What the hell.

            When Allison is gone, Derek immediately rounds on Scott.

            “What are you doing with Allison Argent?”

            Predictably, Scott has missed out on everything that was happening outside Scott and Allison Happy World. He flushes.

            “Uh. Well. We’re sort of… dating, I think? Didn’t you hear? She just asked me to go to Remy’s Diner with her.”

            “You shouldn’t be,” Derek says, practically bearing his teeth.

            “Why not?” Scott is frowning now, his face reddening further. “Actually, since when are you responsible for who I get to date?”

            “She could be dangerous. That’s all. But no, it’s your life. Go ahead and ruin it.” He gets up without a glance backward and strides out of the cafeteria, leaving his wrap uneaten on his plate.

            “Okay, what the hell was that?” says Scott.

            “Uh. Don’t—don’t freak out, ‘cause this has nothing to do with how Allison is as a person, but her aunt…” starts Isaac, playing with his fork, mouth twitching downward in a harried way. 

            “Her aunt is Kate Argent,” says Erica. “Psycho bitch.”

            “I know. Allison told me she’s in jail. What does that have to do with anything? It’s not like Allison’s gonna try and _kill me_.”

            “I doubt she would. But Derek. He. Well.”

            “Wait, Kate _Argent?_ ” says Stiles. A freezing wave blindsides him, flooding him with the half-remembered headline of an old Beacon Hills Chronicle article. The name Katherine Argent had been the first arsonist listed in the snippet under the headline, although her name had inevitably blurred together with the rest of the culprits when the panic attack hit.

            Dad hadn’t said a word about the fire to Stiles, even though he had been on duty the night it had broken out. Maybe he’d had a hunch his son would suffer one of the biggest panic attacks in years if he’d told him. But Stiles had smelled the smoke on his dad’s uniform. Smells it even now. And he _had_ panicked, cripplingly, his bones turning to cotton, when he’d seen the front page of the Chronicle at the gas station. He had run to the gas station bathroom to choke on his breath, his own lungs betraying him as he envisioned with far too much clarity all the people he’d grown up alongside burning alive.

            For two years he’d shoved the memory of that article into his periphery like dirty laundry. Stiles hadn’t mentioned the panic attack to his dad—and, fearing further attacks, hadn’t mentioned the article to him, either, even though he’d wanted to scream at him for never bringing it up. The guilt was too much. Stiles hadn’t been there for the Hales. He hadn’t been there for Derek.

            Now he’s sick to his stomach with how incredibly _stupid_ he’s been. 

            “Yes, stupid. Kate Argent,” Erica says, rolling her eyes at Stiles but directing her gaze at Scott. “Don’t you remember? She and a bunch of guys tried to kill Derek’s family with Molotov cocktails in ninth grade while he was at school.”

            The colour has drained from Scott’s face. Clearly Allison had never told him all the grisly details behind her aunt’s imprisonment, and clearly Scott doesn’t remember the news from when he first moved here. If Derek did, in fact, date Kate Argent, then it puts a whole new spin on why he’s worried about Scott suffering the same fate. Stiles has to pray not all Argents are like Kate.

            “If Peter and Talia hadn’t caught them, everyone would have burned to death in the basement,” says Boyd, in a hushed, sombre tone. Isaac drops his fork on the table with a clatter. He’s paler than Scott. After eating Isaac’s cookies, cookies that were lumpy and misshapen from tiny, clumsy hands, Stiles has concluded Isaac adores Peter’s kids like they’re his own siblings.

             “She’ll be in prison for arson and attempted murder for forever, if we’re lucky,” says Erica. “And luckily, all they burned was a portion of the living room.”

            They all stare at each other for a moment, eyes dark and mouths downturned.

            “Okay,” Stiles starts, “then can someone explain to me why Derek’s been in a shitty mood all day?”

            “It’s kind of a… family thing?” says Isaac, hesitantly. His words shoot a thread of annoyance through Stiles’s ribs. Less than three years ago, Stiles _was_ family. But he nods, because he hates the cloud of gloom that has fallen over their table. He looks back at Scott, who appears to be on the verge of having a mini meltdown over Allison.

            “You can still date Allison,” Stiles tells him, smiling wanly.

            Apparently Stiles’s permission means the world to him. He visibly relaxes.

 

***

 

            Derek makes several people cry in lacrosse practice, for three days in a row, and it gets so bad Finstock spends more time yelling at Derek than he does at Stiles. It’s so bad, in fact, that Stiles doesn’t even try to engage with Derek in the locker room, or in class, or at lunch. He would get more feedback from a brick wall. Derek’s always been a grumpy guy, but at least he _talked_ to Stiles. It’s frustrating to have him back in Stiles’s life again only for him to be in such a terrible mood all the time that he might as well not be in it, at all.

            And Stiles is worried. Isaac had said it was a family matter, but Stiles can’t simply uproot himself from the Hales—can’t help his gut’s insistence that he _is_ family.

            Stiles’s mom had been the bridge between the Stilinskis and the Hales, and his mom would hate it if she knew Stiles had walked away from Derek’s table in ninth grade. He’s even more ashamed about the fire. It’s as though he’s trapped in a burning building himself, sometimes, if he thinks about it too hard. He doesn’t think about it too hard, if he can help it.

            He drives home from practice that day in a temper, Derek’s mood having inevitably rubbed off. Once he’s home, he can’t help thinking about—well, about everything. About how his mom would be at the Hale house, without question, to help the Hales with their burnt living room two years ago. She would probably be over there helping them right now, too.

            Derek had been tired and downtrodden all day. Honestly, Stiles has no right to be angry with him. He should have just _asked him_ what’s wrong, and tried to make him feel better, like an actual friend. Like his mother would.

            He’s in the middle of feverishly finishing his chemistry homework when he has his epiphany. For the last hour he’s been so deeply steeped in thoughts of his mother and the fire and Derek he’s not even sure he’s written the correct answers down. But whatever, Mr. Harris’s homework is the last thing that matters right now.

            Stiles takes out his phone, stares down at it for a long moment, and finally types out:

 

            _What’s wrong?_

He taps an agitated beat out on the floor with his foot, waiting, muttering, “Come on, come on,” before, almost tentatively, his phone chimes with Derek’s reply.

 

            _nothing._

“ _Fuck,_ Derek!” he shouts at his phone as though it will shout back. It creaks in his tight grip when he keys in the next few words.

 

            _Asshole, I’m coming over._

He pulls on his jacket and runs down the stairs, and in minutes he’s on the road to Derek’s house. He has to drive all the way to the edge of town to get there. It’s a route he knows well from his parents driving him as a kid and from frequent bike rides, and it’s getting dark once he reaches the outer fringes of the Beacon Hills Preserve. He turns down the dirt road that leads up to the Hale property, driving too fast considering the rutted terrain. It’s already twilight under the thick canopy of trees.

            His phone chimes on the seat next to him, but he keeps driving.

            Halfway to Derek’s house, Stiles sees a shadow in the distance, standing right in the middle of the road. He thinks maybe it’s Derek, until he gets close enough to see by his headlights that the person is too tall, and way too old.

            What the hell is an old man doing out here by himself?

            Stiles’s heart kicks into motion, his stomach filling with cold dread. Something isn’t right. The man is smiling, and he’s saying something Stiles can’t hear over the roar of his engine. There’s something in the old man’s hand, oh god, Stiles is in a real life horror movie, this isn’t real—he has a rifle in his hand. He’s raising it, now, aiming the barrel right at Stiles. Stiles hears himself scream.

            Something flies out of the trees, slamming into the old man.

            “Shit! Shit!” Stiles cries, gripping the steering wheel so hard his joints crack. The shadow, whatever it is, fights the old man to the ground. His gun goes off, the sound a whip cracking through the silence. Any intelligent human being would drive away, but Stiles isn’t, he really isn’t. Instead he tumbles out of his Jeep to find the old screaming words as he fights against his assailant.

            “You animals have ruined my daughter’s life!” he shouts, and this time he shoots his attacker in the arm, throwing him off long enough to say, “I will ruin yours in return, Derek. The Hales were never meant to live in Beacon Hills, never alongside the Argents.”  

            All Stiles hears is _Derek_. His ears ring with the name.

            There’s a roar of engines in the distance, steadily growing closer, as Derek dodges another shot, then lunges, throwing the old man’s rifle out of his hands and grabbing him by the throat. Derek lifts up the taller man just like that, one-handed, his feet dangling, and there is nothing about this that does not scream _horror movie_.      The wet choking sounds of the struggling old man are terrible.

            “ _Derek_?” Stiles asks, numbly.

            Derek turns at his voice, but his face is all wrong. It sucks all the air out of Stiles’s lungs, because it’s contorted, animalistic, and his ears are long and pointed. His bared teeth are sharp. His eyes flash a brilliant blue in Stiles’s headlights before he turns back to the old man and digs clawed fingers deeper into the skin of his throat.

            The rumble of engines grows deafening, and four ATVs roll onto the road, surrounding Derek and the old man. Stiles blinks and finds three new people, besides the men on ATVs, standing around Derek. He recognizes them as Talia, William and Peter Hale.

            “Derek, let him go,” says Talia, an unearthly growl simmering beneath her words. Talia’s eyes flash red, even though her face is as fiercely human as Stiles remembers. Derek drops him immediately, letting him fall to his knees on the ground. Stiles doesn’t recognize most of the people on the ATVs, except Chris Argent—and, shit, freakin’ Allison herself, aiming a compound bow at Derek. Derek, who has a claw aimed at the old man’s throat. Talia steps in front of Derek, to tip the old man’s head up to look at her.

            “You will not harm my pack,” she tells him. “In case you’ve forgotten, the Hales and the Argents have a truce. We have vowed to stand together against our enemies. We will not fight amongst each other like pups, no matter how much you and your daughter insist.”

            Everyone who isn’t a Hale has their gun aimed at the four of them – werewolves, vampires, whatever the hell Derek and his family are – in the middle of the road. It looks like the start of a fight, not the end of one, and still Stiles is standing beside his Jeep, doing nothing. Chris Argent’s hand is on the holstered gun at his hip, but his eyes stay focused on the old man.

            “What are you going to do, son?” he asks Chris. “Shoot your old man in cold blood?”

            “I don’t know, Gerard. You were about to do the same with Derek and his friend, here.”

            “You know what kind of monsters they are!” Gerard spits. “Your sister’s methods were always a little over-the-top, but at least they got the job done!”

            “When I was growing up, my mother told me that hunters have a code.”

            “You know what they did to your mother, Chris! And they ruined my daughter – _your sister’s_ – life.”

            “Kate ruined her own life,” says Chris. “I can’t let you ruin anyone else’s.” He nods in Talia’s direction, and Talia nods back, once. “We have a truce with the Hale pack. Not only have you gone against it, you’ve gotten innocent civilians involved.” He points at Stiles, who flinches like Chris’s finger is a weapon. Chris turns back to Talia, shoulder to his father as though he can will him to disappear by not acknowledging him. “I’m sorry, Talia. I won’t let this happen again.”

            With a wave of his hand, Chris invites two of his men to apprehend Gerard, with actual _handcuffs_. They drag him to the back of one of the ATVs. Gerard seems to be deciding how to best murder everyone around him, his son and granddaughter included.

            “There will be serious repercussions if any one of you endangers my pack again,” says Talia, and her voice brooks no argument; clearly, the truce between the Hales and the Argents is tenuous at best.  “You know as well as I do, Argent, that peace _must_ remain in Beacon Hills.”

            “I’m aware,” says Chris. Neither party is happy about their predicament. But the collection of men, plus Allison – who nods at Stiles – depart, ATVs echoing like bombs through the woods. When they’re gone, Stiles is still leaning against his Jeep. His vision is greying at the edges and his breath is sticking in his lungs. He loses himself for a minute or two, maybe longer; he’s not sure, because one moment he’s staring wide-eyed at Derek’s arm bleeding onto the mulch, and the next, Talia is beside him, a hand on his shoulder.   

            “Breathe, sweetie,” she says, gently. “In through your nose, out through your mouth. That’s it. You’re okay. We won’t hurt you.”

            Stiles breathes until he remembers how to do it without Talia’s hand stroking encouraging circles on his back. His chest stings, even though he knows the Hales would never harm him. It’s all just way too much to take in. Talia waits for Stiles to control his breathing, waits for him to look at her, before she says, “Come on over to our house, Stiles. We’ll tell you everything. William will take your Jeep home and I’ll have one of the kids drop you off back home when we’re done. Okay?”

            He nods, compliant, letting himself be more or less lifted to his feet by Derek’s mom. William is already on his way over to Stiles’s idling Jeep. He salutes Stiles as he passes, a greying, smiling version of Derek.

            Walking helps Stiles clear his head and loosen the tightness of his throat, even though the chill autumn air and the adrenaline have him shaking so bad his teeth clatter audibly together. Derek walks up ahead of them, clutching his bleeding arm, with Peter talking quietly at his side.

            The porch lights are on when they arrive at the massive second empire house. It is as inviting and warm as Stiles remembers it, with its white-panelled siding and its well-tended garden yellowing with the season, vines crawling up its walls as lush as ever even at dusk. Stiles follows Talia through the front door and into the study that lies left of the foyer, through square-panelled sliding doors.

            “Sit down, boys,” she says, pointing at a red antique couch in the corner. Derek is almost guiltily obedient, and sits down without a word, without even a glance at Stiles. Stiles follows him and seats himself on the other side of the couch. “Peter, get the—”

            “Got it,” says Peter, already withdrawing two strange objects from a drawer on an ornate wooden desk next to the door. The study has always intrigued Stiles, probably because he and Derek were rarely allowed in it as children. It is full from top to bottom with bookshelves of ancient tomes, and smells of floral incense. The only furniture in the room is the round coffee table in front of them, the couch, and the desk with its off-putting modern office chair.

            Talia covers Stiles with a blanket from the back of the couch, reminding Stiles of Mrs. McCall when he’s seen her treating patients. Meanwhile, Peter places a bowl that looks like a lavishly decorated silver ashtray on the coffee table, along with a tiny plastic baggie of dried flowers.

            Derek grunts beside him. When Stiles looks, he regrets it, because Derek is pulling a bullet out of his arm with freakishly long, pointed fingernails. Stiles isn’t sure whether to be fascinated by how the blood oozes out with the extraction of the bullet or if he should puke. Instead he shudders, still cold from the air outside and the emptiness of his chest.

            Talia pours a liberal amount of the dried flowers into the bowl. She then strikes a match, dropping it into the bowl. The flowers burn easily, like tiny fireworks, a smell like incense filling the study. As soon as they have burned into ash she pours them out into her hand, and without any finesse at all she crushes her handful into Derek’s wound.

            What the fuck.

            Stiles can’t look away as Derek groans, because when Talia removes her hand, the puckered wound is already shrinking. It hisses with blue smoke. Derek muffles another noise of pain and slams his back against the couch with his eyes closed, muscles tense, as the wound fast-forwards until there’s nothing but blood on his perfectly healed arm.

            “Riiiight,” says Stiles, squeakily, a hand on his mouth, “so, uh. Explain?”

            “Of course,” says Talia, kindly. “We’ll start right at the beginning.” She sits down in the office chair, pulling her dark hair into a loose ponytail with an elastic band she keeps on her wrist. “As you already know, my husband took the Hale name rather than me taking the Asper name. There is a reason for that. The Hale family comes from a long line of werewolves.” Stiles chokes, and Talia reaches across the space between them to pat his knee.

            Stiles’s head spins, his stomach plummeting like he’s gone upside-down on an amusement park ride.

            “Okay, so, yeah, that’s—that’s awesome, actually,” he says, honestly, although his heart is rioting against, or possibly for, his favourite books and movies coming true right before his eyes. “But just—I heard that correctly? Werewolves?”

            “Werewolves,” Peter helpfully supplies, grinning from where he’s leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed. Stiles risks a glance at Derek. He finds him looking at Stiles with an open, vulnerable face, lips parted, something pleading behind his eyes. It hurts to see Derek like that. It’s as though Derek’s just barely holding up the world as it crumbles around him.

            “Everyone in this house is a werewolf but Isaac, who is allowed the bite once he’s eighteen, if he wishes,” says Talia. “Please, feel free to ask questions. I prefer not to ramble on needlessly.”

            “Oh, uh, okay. Who was—that guy?” Stiles gestures vaguely at the window. “And why did Allison have a crossbow? A-and why did ashes make Derek heal?”

            Talia taps a manicured finger against her chin, mentally answering the questionnaire Stiles has just provided her. She’d known Stiles back when his ADHD was even worse, when he would ask everyone nonstop questions about every possible topic under the sun. She had always been the most patient, the most willing to answer—and had, in fact, seemed to _enjoy_ enlightening him, unlike her son. That has not changed, even now.

            “Okay. First answer. The man who just tried to murder you and my son was Gerard Argent. He’s the father of Chris and Kate Argent, and grandfather of your friend Allison. The Argents are a family as old as the Hales, maybe even older, and their job is to hunt creatures like us.”

            “They’re _werewolf hunters_?” Inanely, he thinks, _thank god Scott isn’t a werewolf._

            “Yes. But only if that creature harms humans. They have a code, ‘Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent,’ which means ‘we hunt those who hunt us’. The Hales and Argents have been at peace for generations. We leave each other alone as long as neither of us are going around slaughtering innocents.”

            “And—the—”

            “Gerard has never agreed to the truce since an Omega – a lone wolf - killed his wife. Gerard stopped caring for the code after her death. That’s the main reason the Argents left Beacon Hills about twenty years ago. I had a feeling he would come back sooner or later, after what happened with Kate—after she tried to kill us all by going against their code and burning down our house. So, yes, I guess answer number one answers your second question—Allison has joined the family business, as a hunter. She favours the bow. And lastly, question number three. Werewolves can heal from most wounds, but most species of wolfsbane are deadly to us. Wolfsbane-infused bullets can kill us. What I did right now was to enable my son to heal.”

            “That—that bullet would’ve killed him?”

            Talia provides a solemn nod.

            “Wait—so, this stuff, with Gerard being in town—is _that_ why you’ve been an asshole all week, Derek?”

            He isn’t thinking when he says it, and maybe he’s feeling particularly rueful, because when both Talia and Peter laugh and Derek’s ears turn a nice shade of red, Stiles gets a little spike of satisfaction.

            “Oh, Derek. I have no idea where he gets his grouchy genes. My guess is his grandmother. I’ve told him a thousand times not to let his anger fester, because he just ends up taking it out on all his loved ones.”

            “Mom, can you _please_ stop talking about me like I’m not here?”

            “I’ve _told him_ ,” Talia continues, like Derek isn’t there, “he’s supposed to take his anger out on the adorable woodland creatures if he needs to. But does he listen? No.”

            Derek groans in embarrassed frustration.

            “I don’t know, Talia, I think Stiles looks a little too much like an adorable woodland creature. Wouldn’t want to encourage him.”

            “Don’t be creepy, Uncle Peter,” says Laura, appearing in the doorway beside Peter. “Hey, Stiles, so you found out the family secret? I could hear your heartbeat from the third floor.”

            “Go away, Laura,” Derek snaps. Stiles nearly giggles, because despite the blood drying on Derek’s arm, and despite the _lycanthropy_ and the mess of emotions roiling in Stiles’s gut, Derek and his family still behave like—well, like a normal family. The normalcy is somehow comforting. And yet the panic is still there somewhere, threatening to burst to the surface again at any moment.

            When Laura stays, sitting resolutely on the rug, Derek turns to Stiles as if to pretend she’s not there.

            “Stiles, I told you not to come. Why don’t you _listen_?”

            “Hey, nobody told me not to—oh.” He remembers the texts he hadn’t checked on the way to Derek’s. “Shit. I, uh, didn’t see them.”

            “Damn it, Stiles.” Derek runs his fingers through his hair, vulnerability back with a vengeance. Stiles has to look away again. He finds Laura staring at him instead, as intensely as her brother is wont to do, with the same sharp, pale eyes.

            “Gee, I’m sorry for being worried about you,” Stiles says to his shoes.

            “Yeah, Der, it’s fine. Right? Are you fine?”

            Stiles takes in all four pairs of eyes currently fixed on him, eyes that he knows can change to red or blue. He’s not sure if he _is_ fine. It’s really cool, obviously, despite the prickling in his lungs, and the guns, and the teeth. Because it’s fucking _lycanthropy_. And it’s _real._

            But the Hales were his family. They _still are family_ , he realizes, looking at them now. Nothing’s changed—not exactly.

            He just can’t stop thinking about his mom.

            His heart’s sunk somewhere below his knees when he says, “I don’t know how I am.”

            Derek’s eyes focus on Stiles’s chest, then dart up to his face, penetrating in a way that makes his skin uncomfortably hot.

            “That’s okay,” says Talia. “You can think about it for as long as you need. Just don’t go telling anyone.”

            Stiles breathes in, and then out again.

            “Why didn’t you ever tell us?” Stiles asks, finally, heart thumping wildly.

            “We planned on it,” says Talia immediately, a sad smile tightening her lips. “Anna knew, those last two years, but we never got around to it with you and your dad.”

            Stiles’s vision starts to go grey again.

            “My—my mom?”

            Derek’s hand twitches convulsively where it’s resting on his knee, but he seems to think better of moving it towards Stiles. It curls into a fist instead.

            “Yes. She kept our secret very well,” says Talia.

            “The Stilinskis are totally our secret keepers,” Laura pipes up from the rug where she is now lying on her back. A horrible hiccup escapes Stiles, and he has to put his face in his hands just to laugh. It’s an ugly sound, like he’s weeping. He’s not sure it’s all that different.

            “Is there anything else you want to know?” asks Talia. Stiles shakes his head, face still cupped in his hands. Her hand returns to Stiles’s knee, drawing circles there with a thumb. “I’m sorry, Stiles. We never meant to spring this on you so suddenly. But these things don’t always turn out the way we want them to. I understand if you’d rather not be involved with us after this.”

            Stiles wants to say that no, it’s not like that, not at all, but his throat is clenched too tightly around the words.

            “You can think about it,” Talia says, patting his knee and pulling away. “Derek, would you drive him home?”

            “ _Without_ being a grumpy asshole?” Laura adds, with rare sincerity that is dampened slightly by Peter’s snort of laughter. Derek gets to his feet, but Talia grabs him by the wrist before he can pass her. She looks up at him, a low growl in her throat as she rubs her cheek to Derek’s hand in what Stiles had always thought to be an affectionate gesture, but now seems like something more. She nips it, a warning, and lets him go. Stiles has never seen any of them do that before.

            Well, except when Stiles was a kid and Derek and Laura bit each other at the slightest provocation. But that doesn’t count.

            Derek walks out of the study without a backward glance at Stiles. Stiles unwraps himself from his blanket cocoon to follow him on shaky knees, and Laura smacks his calf as he walks by. When Stiles pauses, she smiles up at him from the rug. It’s about as affectionate as Laura can be, which is still way more affection than her brother is ever willing to give. Stiles nods, stilted, says an awkward, “I’ll see you guys later,” and passes Peter, who he can feel staring at his retreating back all the way to the front door.

            Once he’s outside he spots Derek going around the house towards the little collection of cars they have parked in a circle of young trees beside the house.

            Stiles is a shivering mess when he gets into the passenger seat beside Derek. Derek is as stony-faced and unshakeable as he always is. He waits until Stiles has buckled himself in before he backs out of the mini parking lot. He steers them down the worn dirt road that curves in front of the house and down the long driveway. Stiles can’t speak for probably the first time in his life.  

            For a while Stiles sits in silence, his own posture as taut as a pulled bowstring. The moon flashes silvery-white light onto his legs through the trees lining the road.

            “I’m not okay with this,” Stiles tells the moonlight on his leg, because he can’t look at Derek and see his eyes glittering blue in the dark. He knows, he _remembers_ , how Derek’s eyes had shone the same way, when they were ten and their families went camping in the woods. He had thought it was _cool,_ walking down the trail with Derek back then _._ He had asked Derek about it, in the tent, afterwards, and Derek had said, simply, _‘it’s just what my eyes do_ ,’ and Stiles had simply told him it was the best thing he’d ever seen.

            He still thinks it’s cool, now, even though his chest aches with the knowledge that Derek is looking at him right now with those eyes, waiting for him to continue.

            “I—I know I fucked up, Derek,” Stiles says. “It’s probably my fault that you kept this a secret from me for so long and I’m sorry, alright, for _everything_. But—if there’s any other reason you didn’t tell me, you gotta say so.”

            “I don’t have a reason,” Derek says, slowly.

            “Bullshit,” Stiles says. “Do Boyd and Erica know?”

            The answering silence is unbearable.

            “Are you serious? _They_ know?”

            “I trust them,” says Derek, which just makes everything ten times worse.

            “Why couldn’t you trust me?”

            “That’s not what I meant.” Stiles risks a glance at Derek, and his face is tight and closed-off. Stiles is in such an unfathomably bad mood that he wants to punch Derek just to see what happens.

            “That’s what it sounds like to me,” says Stiles, and his voice is more of a growl than Derek’s. “I mean, it’s not like this isn’t the most amazing thing to ever happen in my life or anything. But no, go ahead, leave Stiles in the dark. Whatever.”

            “Maybe I didn’t tell you because I’m not trying to _amuse you_ with what I am!”

            Stiles is shocked they don’t end up rolling into a ditch when they both shoot a glare in each other’s direction.

            “Yeah, Derek, almost getting killed back there was _hilarious._ I’d love to do it again sometime,” he snaps, crossing his arms over his chest. Stiles is annoyed to find he’s still shaking.

            “That’s the thing,” Derek says, like he’s on to something. “Maybe knowing about us will just endanger your life even more. I trust Boyd and Erica to stay out of the way. Our life can be dangerous, and I—I can’t let anything happen. Not to you.”

            And Stiles—he doesn’t have anything to say to that. His mind is derailed in its struggle to think of a reply, because, seriously, did Derek just imply that Stiles is more important than the Leather Jacket Club? What the hell is he supposed to say to that? He gapes at Derek, at his stern, shadowed face, headlights and streetlights dashing across it like frightened things.

            “It would’ve been better if you’d just stayed away,” Derek mutters, and the anger in Stiles’s gut swells like a tidal wave.

            “Wow, okay, Edward Cullen,” Stiles says, bitterly, because Stiles is an idiot with zero self-preservation. Derek snaps his head to look at him, brow furrowed in confusion. Stiles would laugh, if this situation weren’t so completely un-funny. “Okay, you know what? First of all, _I_ get to be in charge of what I do and who I’m friends with. Me. _Stiles._ Second—Stiles is also responsible for the idiotic things he gets up to on a daily basis, whether it’s lacrosse or having his head blown off by geriatric hunters. Not you. And _lastly_ , don’t you dare act like this is some kinda Peter Parker/Mary Jane bullshit. You are not a superhero, and I can take care of myself.”

            For a moment Derek just breathes loudly at him through his nostrils.

            “If you die—”

            “Then I’ll die! I don’t care!” He shouts, throwing his arms up in frustration. The silence that follows is much weightier, almost suffocating, and Stiles hates it more than anything.

            “Stiles,” Derek says, minutes later, when he’s pulling into Stiles’s driveway. “Your mom—”

            “Don’t.” Stiles opens the door before Derek has even come to a complete stop and slams the door, hard, behind him.

            William Hale waits for him in his driveway, leaning against his Jeep twirling Stiles’s keys.

            “Hey, you okay, Stiles? Your—”

            “I’m fine, thank you. I just, I gotta go—homework.”

            He takes the keys from him and breezes by, into the warm safety of his own house. He locks the door behind him. Leans against the door in the darkness of his front hall.    

            When Derek had brought up his mom, it had hit Stiles too close to home, literally, and he just can’t _deal_ with that right now. His mom knew about the Hales. _His mom._ They were all a family, once. The Stilinskis and the Hales. For Stiles to lose the Hales again, so soon after gaining them back—it’s unthinkable. He hates Derek a little for even suggesting that he stay away. Stiles needs this secret, he realizes, to be a family with the Hales again, just like his mom.

            Except. No. He doesn’t want them to be family.

            He wants them to be pack. Human and weak though he may be.

Stiles exhales hard, his breath shaking and hitching on its way out. It takes at least an hour before his heart stops thundering.

 

***

 

            Stiles spends the rest of the evening in his bedroom pillaging every website on werewolves in existence.

            Eventually, when the sky begins to pale outside his window, Stiles wanders into his dad’s bedroom to find old photo albums featuring the Hale family. It hurts, to see his mom in all the ones dated before he was twelve. There are pictures of Talia and Stiles’s mom with their arms wrapped around each other, laughing, the corners of their eyes crinkled. There are family barbecues, and the one memorable occasion where they all went camping together and Stiles got poison ivy.

            In a few of the ones where flash was used, the Hales’ eyes are mere flares of light. Stiles had always wondered what had happened to the film to cause such a bizarre side effect. Now he knows.

            He wants to throw all the albums out the window. It’s like the Hales no longer belong to him, and by Derek’s standards like _he_ no longer belongs to them. Instead he’s a part of the sentence that doesn’t belong. A semicolon at most.

            Stiles is still drowning in a confused whirlpool of guilt and insecurity when Dad comes home from work. Stiles has to lie and tell him he isn’t feeling well. He looks shitty enough after last night’s events and from not sleeping that his dad believes him. He lets him stay home from school. It’s past ten o’clock in the morning when Stiles finally lies down and drops into unconsciousness like he’s been swimming against a current all night.

 

***

 

            Scott bikes over to Stiles’s after lacrosse practice, and he’s kind enough to come bearing all of Stiles’s homework. They end up ignoring the homework in favour of sitting in the living room, taking turns playing Mass Effect 3. Scott has spent the last half-hour glancing over at Stiles; Stiles knows for a fact he still has dark circles under his eyes, and that Scott’s best skill is deducing the emotions of his loved ones. It’s both a blessing and a curse. Right now it is definitely the latter. 

            “So what’s wrong with you?” Scott bluntly asks Stiles, out of the blue in the middle of a cut scene.

            “What do you mean?”

            “You skipped.” Scott steals the controller out of Stiles’s hands and begins shooting at Reapers before Stiles can stop him. “And you’re being quiet. It’s kinda freaking me out.”

            “Shut up,” he says, to Scott’s smirk. He snags at the controller only to have it yanked out of his reach. “I just woke up feeling crappy. It’s nothing.”

            “Is it about Lydia?”

            “What?”

            This seems to be a theme, with them. Scott turns the conversation in a direction Stiles knows, in his gut, he is not going to like, and yet he lets Scott keep talking, anyway.

            “I saw you two talking for, like, the first time ever at school the other day. That’s definitely a lovesick face. You _stayed home_ because you are totally lovesick. I should know, after all I went through with Allison.”

            Stiles’s mouth opens and closes, fishlike, as he gapes at Scott, who is lazily shooting up wave after wave of aliens. Stiles finds himself simultaneously impressed with Scott’s ability to multitask and nonplussed by the idiotic drivel that, far too often, tumbles its way out of Scott’s mouth.

            “You’re kidding, right?” Stiles asks. Scott shakes his head with a grin. “Well, I’m not. I was _normal sick,_ not _lovesick._ And shame on you for ever using that as a valid diagnosis.”

            Scott just laughs, and kills more Reapers.

            “If you say so, Stiles.”

            It further irritates Stiles when Scott acts the know-it-all. Because he is not. Scott knows absolutely nothing and is wrong about everything in the entire world. What Stiles feels about Derek, and about the truth of him and his family—it’s not even in the same _category_ as lovesick.

            There’s a painful tug in his chest when he concludes that it’s not lovesickness, but homesickness. The revelation blindsides him so badly he forgets what to do when Scott decides to hand the controller back to him. Stiles is overrun by Husks within seconds, while Scott cackles beside him. Commander Shepard is brutally murdered.

            The mission failure music blares through the room as an ode to Stiles’s life.

 

***

 

            Stiles spends the weekend glancing at his phone like it’s about to sprout fangs and take a chunk out of his jugular. He gets texts from Scott and one from Allison telling him to feel better. Allison’s text, he thinks, is thinly veiled concern over what happened the night Stiles went out to the Hale house. Each time his phone chimes with a new text he jumps five feet in the air, expecting it to be Derek, or someone asking about Derek, and each time it’s neither. It’s stupid, and he knows it is, but he’s just not ready to deal with how he feels about Derek’s family. About Derek. And he honestly doesn’t think Derek feels the same way. He doubts Derek gets homesick, with a home like his.

            At school on Monday Stiles continues to avoid Derek. He sits at the front of economics with Scott, with Allison’s permission. Stiles sees a line appearing between Allison’s eyebrows as she stares at Derek’s back in Stiles’s usual spot. She clearly has ideas about the reason for their seating change. Stiles isn’t sure he wants to know. Halfway through class, Scott looks down at his phone, looks up, and then whips around to face Stiles so suddenly it brings Dramatic Chipmunk to mind and Stiles has to bite down on a laugh.

            “What’s up with you and Derek?”

            Stiles sees a text on the screen of Scott’s phone. Damn it, Allison.

            “ _Nothing_ ,” Stiles insists in a whisper, because he can see Finstock eyeing them from across the room.

            “Is he why you skipped last week?” He’s frowning and pouting simultaneously. Stiles might find the puppy face adorable any other time, but right now it’s just getting on his nerves. Finstock seems to agree—he stomps over to Scott’s desk and slaps his hands down on its surface.

            “I don’t see you writing words on that handout. Why don’t I see words, McCall?”

            “Uh. I don’t know. Sorry, Coach.”

            “Yeah, you _better_ be sorry. Write things down, McCall! A fail in econ means no lacrosse,” he snarls, stalking off to yell at someone else who is talking rather than working.

            Stiles thankfully hears no more about Derek after that, nor does Derek do anything but brood at him from dark corners. Stiles sits at Allison’s table with Scott at lunch. Pretty much the instant his tray hits the table he loses his appetite, because already people are bringing up the D-word again.

            “Are you and Derek okay?” Allison asks, genuine worry writ into the line between her eyebrows. She’s the only one here who would know why Stiles has an actual, valid reason to be avoiding Derek. But being asked about him still ties his stomach up into knots.

            “Why do we care?” says Jackson. For once Stiles is grateful for the presence of the King of Douches and his complete indifference about Stiles’s personal life. But both Danny and Lydia, who have Stiles under their scrutiny like he’s their delectable prey, ignore Jackson’s comment. He has a feeling they tend to ignore Jackson’s comments a lot.

            “Did they break up?” asks Danny, the picture of innocence. Jesus Christ. He is the actual devil.

            “Ha—no, it isn’t like that.” Stiles hurries to answer. “We’re friends. Friends who are going through a rough patch, and it’s none of your business, all right?”

            “I would go with ‘it’s not like that _yet_ ,’ Stiles,” Lydia says, primly, as though she is merely correcting his grammar. Jackson snorts. Scott spits orange juice onto the table. Stiles would like to stab himself with his fork.

            There is something horribly wrong, not to mention _unfair_ , with the prospect of his crush since third grade implying _things_ about his best friend since second grade. Something very, very wrong. Yet his stomach’s twisting itself into such a labyrinth of knots he doesn’t think it will ever come undone. He might actually puke.

            “Derek’s just my friend,” Stiles repeats, lamely.

            Everyone at the table smiles pityingly at him, except for Jackson, who looks bored, and Scott, who is frown-pouting in confusion. Allison pats Scott on the arm and kisses him on the cheek, and the subject is dropped, after that, changing instead to lacrosse.

            Unfortunately, Stiles still has two more periods to get through after lunch. He finds himself cornered by Lydia before history, literally backed up against a locker. It’s one of Stiles’s most favourite fantasies, a fantasy he’s had less and less these days.

            “I’m staging an intervention,” she tells him, poking a finger into the middle of his chest.

            “Wha—”

            “You and Derek need to get your heads out of your asses. Extreme measures must be taken so you quit being blind and Derek stops staring at you like a sad puppy. It’s pathetic. And frankly, I don’t care if it’s for your platonic or romantic livelihoods. I’m just sick of hearing about everyone’s opinions on your love life, or lack thereof.”

            She whips out her phone and begins texting furiously. Stiles is left trapped against the lockers, dizzy and nonplussed. 

            “Lydia, I’m not—”

            “Shh!”

            “W-who are you texting?”

            “Laura.”

            “ _Hale_?”

            “Who else?”

            “How the hell do you even know each other?”

            “She’s the only barista at Starbucks who knows how to make a chai latte taste like chai instead of hot milk. Of course we’re friends.”

            Stiles watches her fingers fly across the keys.

            “Why exactly do you care about my—uh—livelihood? You treated me like I didn’t exist, before.”

            “It’s not about you, Stiles. A girl can only tolerate gossip for so long.” He’s not sure he wants to know what kind of gossip has been going on about him and Derek. He chooses to block out that portion of her diatribe. “And for your information, it’s a lot easier to like someone when they aren’t constantly attempting – badly, might I add – to Nice Guy you.”

            Stiles blinks in alarm, but rather than speaking from the heart he lets his mouth say whatever the hell it wants.

            “You said you like me,” he says, grinning. Lydia smiles minutely and shoves him harder into the locker. She sends a lengthy text, then puts her phone in her handbag.

            “An intervention has been scheduled. Thank you for your time,” she says, patting Stiles on the shoulder. She spins away from him in a whirl of strawberry blonde and taps away down the hall. The bell for next period rings, as if on cue.

            “Oh god,” Stiles mutters, bumping his head against the locker behind him.

            He spends the rest of the day avoiding everyone. He’s so done with the general populace of Beacon Hills High School he skips lacrosse practice to escape them and their apparent _gossip,_ whatever that means.

            Stiles doesn’t fully comprehend his anxiety, however, until he gets home to find Laura’s red Mercedes in his driveway. Laura herself is sitting on his front step, a man Stiles recognizes as Scott’s boss at the veterinary clinic standing beside Laura, arms crossed.

            Stiles seriously considers driving away and leaving town to avoid whatever kind of _intervention_ this is, but he’s fairly certain Laura would chase him down and flay him alive if he did. And, much like the cat, he is curious about what they have to say and why Dr. Deaton is involved.

            Stiles parks his Jeep and goes to greet them, a criminal on death row.

            “Afternoon, Yev!” Laura says, waving, her genial smile belying the evil that lies below the surface.

            “Uh, hey. What’s the vet doing here?”

            “Hello, Stiles,” says Dr. Deaton, smiling just as warmly and forebodingly as Laura.

            “Alan is here to help me out. A little bird told me you haven’t spoken to Derek since last Thursday. Even though _Derek_ claims you weren’t lying, when you said you’re okay with us. ‘Cause if you haven’t guessed, we’re werewolves, and we can hear and _smell_ when you’re lying. So—what’s wrong?”

            Stiles looks between Laura and Deaton. He licks his lips, nervous.

            “He knows about us,” Laura adds, flapping a hand at Deaton.

            “Say whatever is on your mind,” Deaton says, nodding.

            “I—no, I don’t have a problem with you guys.” Obviously there’s no point lying when Laura’s present. He decides, for once, to stick with the truth. “I’m just. Not sure where I fit in, you know? With a pack of werewolves.” 

            “Easy. You’re pack, too,” she says, and Stiles’s heart lurches. The question, ‘ _Does Derek feel that way?’_ immediately fills his mind like a smoke bomb. “And so’s your dad, and your mom was, too.”

            Stiles flinches at the mention of her, but Laura keeps talking, even though she must hear the way his pulse accelerates.

            “Actually, your mom was the one who insisted we wait before we tell you and your dad. She wanted to educate herself on what it meant to be part of a pack, and learn how to keep herself and her family safe.”

            “And that’s where I come in,” says Deaton.

            “Yeah. He’s—sort of an advisor. Alan and the ones before him have been advising werewolves for years now. They’re the reason we know how to heal from wolfsbane bullets, among other things.”

            “If we could all sit down, Stiles, I’d be willing to teach you, too. If you’d like.”

            Stiles is definitely in over his head. In every possible way. But he finds himself agreeing, full to the brim with longing for the _pack_ he’s been missing for years, the pack he still can’t quite believe he has.

            He unlocks the door for them and they all sit down at the kitchen table, Deaton with an offered glass of water and Laura with a can of Dr. Pepper. Once they’re settled, Deaton begins to explain every facet of lycanthropy in his slow, soothing tone.

            He tells Stiles some things Stiles has already researched, and answers any questions Stiles has that the Internet failed to provide. He learns about wolfsbane, and the effects the different species have. He’s told about Alphas, Betas and Omegas and the forms they can take, and about how they can control themselves during their first full moon. According to Deaton, the Hales have been uniquely matriarchal through the decades, with Derek’s grandmother being the Alpha before Talia, and stating that Laura, too, is perfect for following in her mother’s footsteps.

            The Internet was very wrong about pretty much everything, it turns out. Deaton tells him things it never even mentioned, such as the Hales’ seasonal celebrations – which are strangely religious – and about a werewolf’s skills, both physical and mental, at which point Laura pipes up with:

            “He means it, Yev. We can smell and sense _everything._ It makes watching porn in my house a real bitch.”

            Stiles chokes on his tongue, and Deaton’s lip twitches.

            “On that note – thank you, Laura – it should be noted that there are certain precautions one can take to defend their homes from the supernatural.” He pulls a small jar out of his pocket, a strange design on its label. It’s full of black dust. “Mountain ash. Your mother lined the doors and windows of this house with it under my instruction. If any unwelcome predators – supernatural predators – wanted to make trouble with you, the mountain ash would keep them out.”

            “You could say your mom’s protecting you even now,” Laura adds. Stiles can only nod, and swallow convulsively—because what is he even supposed to say to that?

            “Anyway,” says Laura, like she knows, “the point is—you’re pack. Whether you like it or not. And if you _do_ like it, let me know if you want your dad to find out. We can tell him, if you can’t.”

            Stiles stares long and hard at his own hands tangled together on the tabletop.

            “I do like being in your pack,” he says, eventually. It doesn’t feel right to ask if Derek shares the sentiment, mostly because he’s afraid of the answer. “I’ll—I’ll let you know about my dad.”

            Relief relaxes the tenseness of Laura’s jaw, minutely, and her smile grows.

            “Good,” she says. “Then will you talk to Derek? Please? I’m getting real sick of his moping.”

            “Yeah,” Stiles says, his throat as tight as ever. “I’ll talk to him.”

 

***

 

            _Could you come over after school tomorrow? I saw your mark on your last history test. Looks like you need help._

            It’s one forty-five in the morning when he sends the text. Stiles has been too keyed up to sleep for the last several days, and only does, fitfully, after _collapsing_ from exhaustion. He’s too awake right now to do anything but pace his room and intermittently read Percy Jackson. He doesn’t expect to get a text back this late at night. But when he returns to his bedroom from brushing his teeth and washing his face, there are two texts from Derek waiting for him on his phone.

 

            _fuck you._

And then, less than a minute later,

 

            _I’ll be there._

***

 

            The next day passes normally, as though nothing has changed between them at all. He sits in his spot behind Derek again, much to Allison’s smiling approval. He doesn’t hear any of this _gossip_ when he’s ensconced in the relative safety of Derek’s table during lunch, either, much to his relief.

            When he’s alone with Derek he tries to make up for the last week by attempting to draw a laugh or two out of Derek. He does so by asking him the dumbest questions he can about werewolves. He asks whether he has a tail when he shifts, or about whether male werewolves have knots on their penises. For the most part he finds himself shoved into things as a result, but he thinks he saw Derek’s lip twitch once or twice.

            Stiles was up way too late last night. By the end of the school day he needs some more caffeine in his veins, stat. He knows from their sleepovers as kids that Derek is a painfully early riser; he probably needs the caffeine even more than Stiles does. Stiles drives to Starbucks with Derek after school, asking him more questions on the way. He tries for serious ones that Deaton didn’t answer, and Derek is uncharacteristically obliging with most of them. Others, he frowns and calls Stiles an idiot.

            Starbucks is full of students when they arrive. Laura and a guy covered with tattoos are behind the counter, taking the customer’s orders all in a stride.

            “Maybe Laura will tell me about the penises,” says Stiles, as they stand in line. Derek shoves him in disgust. Stiles nearly knocks over an empty chair as he stumbles, grinning. When he rights himself, knocking against Derek, he can tell Derek’s fighting a laugh, his lips shaking precariously. “Don’t think I’m not serious.”

            “I know you are,” says Derek, and his laugh is long-suffering.

            “Why are you guys talking about penises in my coffee shop?” Laura asks, loudly, when it’s their turn to order. Several people stare and Derek’s ears turn the shade of beets.

            “I thought it would be awkward to ask Deaton, right? So I was wondering about whether the stuff I read about wolves is true, with the—mmph!”

            He ends up with a huge, hot hand over his mouth, muffling what he thought was a very important question.

            “Oh, you mean about knots?” says Laura, casually. “Nope.”

            “Shut up,” hisses Derek, desperately. “A grande Americano and a plain coffee, please. _Please._ ” The last ‘please’ is almost a whimper, at the devious glint in Laura’s eye.

            “Americano for Stiles and a cinnamon dolce for Stinkface. Got it,” she says, writing their names on their cups.

            “That’s not what I ordered.” Derek’s murderous voice is always the best when it’s aimed at Laura, because Laura, generally, either ignores it or laughs at it. In this case it’s both.

            “Yes you did,” she says. “I’m sick of letting you steal mine because you’re too manly to order it yourself. You’re getting it.” She rings up the purchase, slapping Derek’s hand away before he can physically stop her from entering the order. “That’ll be six forty-five.” 

            Derek coughs up the money with pursed lips, practically throwing it at her, and they wait for their orders in silence. Or in silence before Stiles blurts out what’s on his mind.

            “I think it’s cute that you like cinnamon dolces.”

             Derek’s frown only deepens, and his ears only burn redder.

            “A cinnamon dolce for—Stinkface?” says the brunette girl making their drinks, a few minutes later, placing a cup on the counter. “And Americano for, uh, Yev-jin-eh.”

            Stiles joins Derek with the flushing, his face heating up at the girl’s horrible mispronunciation of his first name.

            His mother’s decision to name her son Yevgeni had inevitably led to bullying when Stiles was little. When she had found out about it she had suggested calling him Stiles. However, when Laura discovered his real name, she had thought it was adorable and begun to affectionately call him Yev, more often than not.

            “Your sister is a terrible person,” says Stiles as they leave, waving at her.

            “It took you this long to figure it out?”

            After they’ve buckled themselves into Stiles’s Jeep again, Stiles watches, fascinated, as Derek takes his first sip of coffee. Clearly Laura got something right with his coffee order. His eyelashes actually flutter in delight as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing.

            It turns out it’s _more_ than cute that Derek likes cinnamon dolce.

            Stiles coughs in the hopes of jarring himself out of his weird trance, and he leaves the parking lot to drive the five minutes to his house. Derek quietly enjoys his coffee the whole ride there.

            Dad’s awake when they escape the cold November air and get inside. He’s watching baseball in the living room in his cosiest pair of sweat pants.

            “Hello, boys,” he says. “Derek. How have you been?”

            “Oh. Fine,” Derek says, lingering in the doorway with Stiles as they take off their shoes.

            “How’s the family?”

            “They’re good,” Derek says. He glances down at the cup in his hand like he’s searching for encouragement in its lid. Eventually he steels himself enough to say: “Actually, my mom wanted me to ask if you and Stiles would like to come for Thanksgiving.”

            Stiles’s heart leaps, and his dad raises his eyebrows.

            “Really?” Dad laughs, almost longingly. “I haven’t been to a Hale Family Dinner in years. I’ve missed ‘em.”

            “You miss raising your cholesterol levels, you mean.”

            “Yeah, exactly,” says his dad. “I’d love to go, if Stiles is willing.”

            “No—I’d like to go, too.”

            “Want us to bring anything?”

            “Just bring yourselves. My mom will call you.”

            “Gotcha.” He glances at Stiles and shoos them both. “Now get out of here, you two, I’m trying to watch a game, here.”

            They head upstairs with Derek’s books and Stiles’s backpack and their precious coffee. They make some headway on their homework over the course of the next hour, with Stiles at his desk and Derek on the bed. Stiles advises Derek semi-coherently about the Civil War between breaks of showing each other dumb Youtube videos on Stiles’s laptop, and the world outside his window is darkening to a deep blue once they’re finished. They end up sitting on the bed against the shelf at Stiles’s headboard, shoulders pressed together, just talking.

            They share a bag of ranch Doritos between them. Stiles stores all the junk food in his closet to keep it out of his dad’s reach so it’s especially convenient for when he has someone over and they’re both hungry, as they are now.

            “Remember that time we were playing around on the reserve trying to ‘track’ a deer, and I totally thought it was a mountain lion?” Stiles has begun to realize new things about his childhood since last week’s historically life-changing events. “You knew it was a deer the whole time, didn’t you?”

            “I did,” Derek says, with a fond little smile. “I like tracking deer, though. It’s fun.”

            “Why? Do you eat them?”

            “Sometimes.”

            “ _Raw_?”

            “We usually bring them home and barbecue them. Relax, Stiles.”

            “ _Usually_?”

            Derek tries to shove him off the bed, but Stiles clings to Derek’s arm for dear life until, with a sigh, Derek pulls him smoothly back up beside him. It brings them even closer than before, their shoulders and hips and legs aligned. They’re basically cuddling.

            They’re quiet, passing the chips back and forth, at ease and hushed for a few minutes before, as usual, Stiles is the first to speak.

            “Soooo… how did you end up being friends with Isaac?” Stiles asks. He has, honestly, been wondering about it since they’d stopped hanging out as much.

            “I thought you knew. We were both in lacrosse in middle school,” says Derek. “Him and Boyd. I met Erica through Boyd, and we all sort of… came together.”

            “Through mutual love for hitting others with sticks?”

            Derek nods with utmost solemnity.

            “Yes.”

            “And you—you helped Isaac?” Stiles asks, incapable of keeping his curious mouth shut.

            Maybe he’s curious because in an alternate universe, Stiles is friends with Isaac, and Stiles’s mom is still alive, and he could have told her about the shitty situation at Isaac’s house. His mom could have saved him. His mom saved everyone. But if Stiles thinks like that, he would never stop thinking about all the lives he could have had. All the things that could be different. One of those things would be staying at Derek’s table at lunch and pulling up a chair.

            “Yeah,” Derek says, and for a moment Stiles isn’t sure he’s going to continue. But then he does, resting his head back against the shelf and staring off into the middle distance. “I kept seeing Isaac with bruises. He’d say they were from lacrosse, but I was _in_ lacrosse. So I told my mom. She helped make things better.”

            At least there are people like Talia Hale still left in this universe, when there are no more Anna Stilinskis to save the day.

            “Your mom is really awesome. And you’re… acceptable,” says Stiles, smiling faintly. There’s another pause, as Stiles taps their socked feet against one another. “And—what happened with Kate? Were you guys… together?”

            Stiles can feel Derek’s body go taut beside his. He almost expects him to leap out of the bed and leave right then and there, but once again he surprises Stiles by staying exactly where he is. Stiles is about to tell him never mind, he doesn’t have to say a thing, but then Derek does.

            “Nobody knows but Laura,” he begins, slowly, talking to the wall. “I joined the swimming team when I was a freshman. Kate was an instructor. Kate and I—well, I liked her. I liked her a lot. I hadn’t known about the Argents back then. Didn’t know any of them could be a danger to me, because they were all just, I don’t know, humans. Harmless. Kate let me fall for her and take her on dates so I would tell her what my family was up to. I let slip that we celebrate Wolf Moons every January. I even told her the whole family gathers in the basement. We lock up the kids who can’t control themselves during the full moon, so if she’d succeeded, they all would’ve been trapped down there.

            “Laura knew I was dating someone named Kate, but she didn’t know she was an Argent until a few days before the Wolf Moon. When she did find out, she kept saying how stupid I was, for trusting her.” Derek swallows, hard. “I _was_ stupid. I’d even _invited Kate over_ for the Wolf Moon, thinking I’d give her the bite because that’s just how naïve I was.

            “Laura promised not to tell anyone what I’d done, but she did warn my parents that Kate Argent was back in town. We’d had problems with Gerard before. When I was really little. You probably know already, but Kate ended up trying to burn the house down with a bunch of her men. During the Wolf Moon, just like Laura predicted. But mom and dad and Peter stopped them in time and my aunt called 911 before it got out of hand. And now Kate’s in prison.”

            He finishes, slouching inward, like Isaac whenever somebody talks too bluntly of violence.

            “It’s not your fault,” Stiles says, gently.

            “That’s what Laura keeps telling me.”

            “And she’s right. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, or whatever, with Kate and Gerard. They’re both _insane_. She would have found another way to get to your family.” 

            Derek shrugs, and Stiles wants to keep arguing, to shake him, to tell him _nothing_ was ever his fault. He’d do anything to make Derek all loose-limbed and content and have him never be sad, ever again. But he knows it’s impossible with himself, never mind with someone like Derek. He leans against Derek instead, trying to express his feelings through the warmth of his presence.

            Abruptly, Derek looks up at Stiles’s face, and it’s like being electrocuted.

            “That’s why I distanced myself from you, these last few years,” Derek says. “I know you don’t like it, but I just couldn’t risk letting you get hurt, like with Gerard the other day.”

            “What the hell, Derek? _Seriously_ —why am I any different from the rest of your friends?”  

            “You just are,” he says, quietly.

            “This isn’t, like, _literally_ Peter Parker and Mary Jane, is it?”

            Derek’s mouth hardens to a thin line, and Stiles’s heart leaps to his throat when he realizes what he’s just asked, and what Derek’s silence has just answered.

            “Oh,” he says, because it is, that’s _exactly_ what it is. Derek has _feelings_ for him, and Stiles cannot actually believe it. He’d ignored any implications that came with gossip about them, because he’s known Derek for years. _Years._ And it’s never even been a possibility that someone like Derek could like Stiles as anything more than a reluctant friend.

            Stiles opens his mouth to say something, _anything_ , but Derek’s already speaking, avoiding the topic entirely like he’s hoping Stiles hasn’t realized what he’s implied. Which is bullshit, because he can sense emotions, and he can probably hear the way Stiles’s heart is trying to ram its way right out through his ribcage.

            “How’s that ten year plan with Lydia going?” Derek asks, out of the blue.

            Stiles gapes at him. He feels like he might faint, or spontaneously combust, starting at his stomach. It is both the best and the worst feeling in the world, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t know what to _do_. 

            “It’s—it’s going fine, I just, I might have to extend it to fifteen,” he says, realizing, as he says it, that the thought of Lydia hasn’t set his heart alight in over a month.

 

***

 

            Stiles has dreams. He dreams of the rasp of stubble against his cheeks and the teasing scrape of teeth on his lips. Of the hot weight of a body over his. He wakes up in the morning trembling and sticky and weak as a kitten. He knows, instinctively, as he lies there in the aftermath, that Derek had fucked him in his dreams—had fucked him until he woke. The sun has already risen, pale and yellow, and for a while Stiles lies there, unmoving, in denial of his consciousness, in denial of the longing he feels building a home in his bones.

            It occurs to him, as he gets up to clean himself off and get ready for school, that home has always been there. This longing is something new. The longing for _Derek_. Or else it’s been hiding, out of reach, just like Derek has, himself, for half their high school career.

            When he goes to school he has to pretend like nothing’s changed. He has to beat his hormones into submission and pray Derek won’t catch a whiff of the arousal leftover from his dreams. He’d showered before school in an attempt to clean off any lingering odours. He is not sure, exactly, how productive the shower was when he spent most of it with his hand working furiously between his legs.

            No, he absolutely will not, and does not, let himself think about the sense-memory of his dream when he meets Derek at the doorway of their economics class. He does not stare at Derek’s mouth for an inordinate amount of time, as they stand there after greeting each other. Derek clears his throat, swallows noticeably, Adam’s apple bobbing, and then makes his way to his seat near the back. Stiles can do nothing but follow. He doesn’t recall what the class was about. All he studies are the hairs on the nape of Derek’s neck and ponder how tender his little ears are.

            At lunch he has to try even harder not to stare, with Derek at the seat right across from his, mouth being put to good use, just like his dream but with a sandwich and not Stiles’s cock. Lydia picks at her fruit salad, a knowing smirk crooking her perfect lips.

            He’s not sure what he ever saw in her in the first place.

            Free period is the worst. For some reason he thought it was a good idea to join Erica and Boyd in the pool bleachers while they wait for Derek to finish swimming laps. And either the chlorine in the air is making Stiles high, or he is definitely checking out Derek in a speedo. No, yeah, he’s definitely checking out Derek in a speedo. Fuck. Add that to his list of masturbation fantasies.

            He can’t take his eyes off the way the water cascades and shines across the muscles of Derek’s back as he cuts through the water, doing lap after lap in the pool. He has no idea when Derek got the triskele tattooed onto his back, but he can’t keep his eyes off the stark black ink on his skin.

            “Stiles? Earth to Stiles?” says Erica. He actually doesn’t know how long she’s been trying to get his attention. He flushes, already hot from the moisture in the air, from a day spent with a feverish, nervous need that hasn’t gone away since this morning. Possibly it’s been there even longer, but it was definitely exacerbated last night, when Derek’s silence rang like a declaration through the room. Stiles had spent the rest of their visit flustered, and had lost every race on Mario Kart as a result.

            “Huh?”

            “Did you finish the chemistry homework?” she’s smiling knowingly, just like Lydia, and Stiles decides to despise her on principle.

            “There was chemistry homework?” he asks, horrified. “Jesus, Harris is going to kill me. I hate _everything_.” Stiles collapses onto his side on the bench, the picture of despair. He’s not normally one to forget to do his homework. But every fibre of his being insists that there is a greater object to focus on, and that object is Derek, who is now climbing out of the pool with the most perfect ass Stiles has ever witnessed on God’s green earth.

            Stiles understands now why the senior girls like to hang out in here.

            “Relax, you can copy mine if you buy me lunch tomorrow,” she says. It is probably the nicest Erica has ever been to him. He has no doubt in his mind it’s because he looks pathetic, sprawling across the bench like a beached eel.

            “You are an angel,” he tells her, then promptly stops breathing because Derek is walking over to them, dripping, with a towel around his shoulders. His swimsuit really doesn’t leave anything to the imagination. Stiles has to force himself to keep his eyes on Derek’s face, and not on his crotch, or… any other body part.

            “I think that merits two lunches,” says Boyd. He’s an asshole. But Stiles likes him anyway, for some reason, because Stiles clearly has terrible judgment.

            “What does?” asks Derek, towelling his hair.

            “Stiles copying my chemistry homework.”

            “You forgot?”

            _Yes, I forgot, because you had to go and give me_ feelings.

            “Heh, yeah, shut up, it slipped my mind,” he says, bitterly.

            “That’s not like you,” Derek says. “If I was in chemistry I would just tell you to suck it up.” Derek’s an asshole, too. He glances up at the clock on the wall between the two pools, and says, “I gotta go change. I’ll be back in a bit.”

            Stiles sits up again, and watches him leave.

            “Hey, so, _you’re_ definitely checking Derek out,” says Erica. Stiles splutters incoherently and sits up, flailing wildly.

            His face is on fire when he looks over at Erica, who is smirking, and Boyd, who leans forward to see Stiles’s reaction with a sick amount of interest.

            “What—I don’t—god, just leave me alone.”

            “You’ve been pretty obvious since, like, the gummy bear incident. This was just obscene.”

            He wants to die. He legitimately wants to die.

            “What about you and Erica? Are we gonna talk about that?” Stiles thinks it’s a low blow, but to his dismay the two of them glance at each other and laugh. He is going to find a pen in his backpack and commit hara-kiri if this goes on any longer.

            “Hey, are we talking about Stiles’s totally obvious crush on Derek?”

            Lydia and Allison appear out of thin air, and are sliding onto the bench beside Boyd. Great.

            “No! No we are not!” Stiles waves his hands through the air as though he’s telling a plane not to land, but it doesn’t work. The plane crashes right on top of him.

            “Yeah, we are,” says Boyd.

            “Oh, you guys would be so cute together,” says Allison.

            “I know, right? Remember my Halloween party?” Lydia looks at Stiles, who is pretty sure he’s going to faint. His vision is blurry from embarrassment. “Stiles, he carried you, a _completely sloshed_ Batman, out of my house, and took you to bed. You can’t get much more romantic than that.”

            He gapes at her, mouth open, completely speechless.

            “You know he’s been pining for you for years, right?”

            His head snaps to look at Erica so fast he hears his neck crack.

            “What?”

            “Derek never actually says these things, because he’s Derek. That’s how he is. But I mean, just, the way he _looks at you_ , Stiles. A girl can guess.”

            “So can a guy,” Boyd says, who seems to reap much pleasure out of adding fuel to the fire.

            “Do _you_ like him, Stiles?” Allison asks. And that is the big question. The four of them stare at him expectantly, and something in him bursts.

            “I don’t know, okay? God!” He snatches up his backpack, and spins on them to say, to their laughing faces, and Allison’s pitying one, “If any of you says a word to Derek I’m going to kill you. All of you. And it will not be painless. Except for Lydia, who gets a quick death for being her pretty self.”

            Lydia preens under his attention for probably the first time ever. That’s just his life, though, for someone to acknowledge his existence only after he’s stopped mentally writing love poems about their strawberry blonde hair and bubble gum lip-gloss.

            Stiles stumbles his way out of the bleachers and out of the sweaty pools into the hallway. His knees give out seconds before he slams his back against a wall. He drops his bag and lets gravity take care of the rest, sliding his way to the floor. He laughs into hands that are knotted nervously together, slightly hysterical, because he knows the answer to Allison’s question.

            He’s in love with Derek.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I attempted to give this fic a slightly John Hughes 80's movie-esque feel but I have no idea if I succeeded or not. The lack of a heavy plot and possible cheesiness are a result of my attempts (or that's my excuse, at least...). I feel like I should apologize in advance for this chapter. 
> 
> But at least there are sexy parts maybe?
> 
> Thank you all for the lovely comments! <3

            The rest of Stiles’s week is astoundingly normal once his feelings for Derek have been driven to the forefront. Erica, Boyd, Allison and Lydia seem to be guilty about ganging up on him in the pool, because none of them brings up Derek again.

            Derek is more relaxed around him, too. At one point he steals Stiles’s pen from him in the middle of history class without asking, and a French fry from his plate during lunch. It takes him two days to realize Stiles knowing about and accepting Derek’s family must have taken a significant weight off Derek’s shoulders.

            Stiles’s chest swells at that particular notion. He begins to give as much as he receives, and his classes with Derek on Friday nearly lead to an all-out war between the two of them. Stiles spends history class poking scraps of paper towards Derek, featuring what he deems to be relevant TV quotes. He mostly does it to get a rise out of Derek; Stiles delights in the sour face Derek makes when he shoves, ‘ _Tell me, Merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?’_ under his nose. When no reply is forthcoming, he adds, underneath: ‘ _Shut up. I know you love Merlin.’_

Derek merely sighs. He jerks Stiles’s pen out of his hand and writes, ‘ _You shut up.’_

Stiles grins. They play a small game of tug-of-war with his pen before Derek gives in and gives it back. The lecture dissolves into white noise in front of them. Scott, at the desk beside theirs, raises an eyebrow at their behaviour. Stiles disregards him favour of writing:

            _‘Make me.’_

            Once he’s written it, he’s struck with a visceral image of Derek’s mouth on his. That would _definitely_ shut Stiles up. He’s not sure he’s ever seen ‘make me’ mean anything less than ‘kiss me senseless.’ Stiles’s pulse quickens, and his mouth goes dry, when Derek takes the pen back, his fingers brushing Stiles’s.

            ‘ _If I knew how to shut you up without murdering you, I’d do it.”_

 Stiles actually does shut up for a while, mostly for the sake of persuading his body to stop reacting to the thought of Derek’s mouth on his. Stiles returns his attention to the lecture on Abraham Lincoln. His attention lasts all of five seconds before Derek begins to doodle on Stiles’s arm. It’s no wonder he needed Stiles’s tutoring in history, really, but Stiles doesn’t stop him, because for the last twenty minutes of class he can savour the warmth of Derek’s hand against his forearm.

            During those twenty minutes Stiles forgets how his lungs work. The pen scratching his skin and Derek’s breath tickling the tender flesh inside his wrist are far too much, and far too little. Within minutes his chest is hot and heavy, smothered in burning coals.

            When the bell rings to end the school day, Stiles’s arm is a sleeve of strange blue symbols. One he recognizes as the triskele on Derek’s back. Another is what appears to be a Celtic knot of Derek’s own design, and there are some random lines and spirals and squiggles as well. Stiles leaves school lightheaded and turned on, his skin tingling wherever Derek touched him. Dad isn’t home from work yet when Stiles pulls into the driveway, and Stiles has two hours to kill before their final lacrosse game of the season.

            Stiles sprints up the stairs to his room, throwing off his backpack and jacket so fast he trips over himself in his struggle to shut the door behind him. He doesn’t quite make it to his bed before he falls to his knees, his pants halfway down his thighs and a hand wrapped around his cock. With his forehead pressed into the end of the bed Stiles licks a hand cursorily and strokes himself too fast, with no finesse at all, to full hardness.

            His left arm rests on the bed in front of him, blue ink stark on his pale skin. If he concentrates he can feel Derek’s warm breath caressing him, and the strength of Derek’s hand as he pinned Stiles’s arm down and kept him still. Derek would probably fuck him like that, Stiles thinks, as he fucks into the circle of his own fist. Derek would thrust into him deeply, thoroughly, pinning Stiles to the bed. His mouth would be unbearable when it covered Stiles’s body with hickeys and bites and kisses.

            Or perhaps Stiles would be the one to smother Derek with everything he has to give—whether it’s the cayenne heat of fucking into Derek, or the heady, sugary kisses he would deliver to Derek’s wonderful mouth. Either way, no matter what they did or how they did it, Stiles would saturate himself in everything _Derek,_ as he is now. He can smell Derek on him. Or he imagines he does, and the spicy cinnamon haze fills him to the brim.

            Stiles comes embarrassingly fast in a hot, blissful wave that leaves him shuddering and twitching and biting down on his comforter. It takes him a minute or two for his brain to catch up to the whims of his body. When it does, Stiles is left blinking down at the streaks he’s left on the carpet with something akin to horror.

            “Shit, shit, shit,” he mutters, tucking himself away and zipping up his jeans. He stumbles out of the room on shaky knees to find something to clean up the mess he’s made. But, too late, the damage has already been done, even if he does lift the stains out of the carpet.

            He’s so far-gone with Derek already, and it hasn’t even been a week since he had his revelation about him. His feelings are a _mess_. They’re the complete opposite of the tidy, unrequited longing he had for Lydia all those years.

            Stiles isn’t any better in two hours, when he is faced with the man himself in his stupid lacrosse uniform. It’s their last game of the season, and Derek’s face is especially stormy, which Stiles supposes is his game face. Or his usual face. Stiles likes that face, anyway, for some reason. He spends a majority of the game searching for Derek’s face on the field from the bench, and when his helmet gets in the way, he finds the number eight on Derek’s jersey. Ramirez ends up with an injured knee halfway through the third quarter. Much to Stiles’s surprise, and great pride, Scott is chosen to play in his place.

            He cheers for eight and eleven. Both of them score in equal measures. It’s awesome. When the timer ends the final quarter, Beacon Hills win, all thanks to Scott. When everyone pours out into the field, Stiles joins them, screaming himself hoarse, and he embraces Scott with the rest of the crowd. Stiles soon ends up being jostled aside and is instead sandwiched between Isaac and Derek. And it’s _more_ than awesome. He uses the opportunity to hug Derek, to jump up and down and yell in his ear, because despite the chaos in him and around him, Stiles is still bewilderingly at ease in Derek’s presence.

            Derek isn’t cheering along, but he is grinning. He hauls Stiles up around the waist and bounces him as Stiles laughs and shouts, his chest ready to burst with a joy as warm and light as helium.

            More than half an hour later the excitement levels finally peter out enough for the crowd to thin out and the team to make their way to the change rooms. Finstock is as red-faced and exploding with energy as his team. A happy Finstock is a reckless Finstock, Stiles has learned, because he invites the whole team to his favourite restaurant downtown for karaoke night. He provides the directions and Stiles finds himself, fifteen minutes later, with a Jeep full of Scott, Isaac, Allison and Erica, while everyone with a vehicle carpools the rest of the team.

            The Jeep is deafening with everyone’s combined adrenaline. Stiles is impressed he only gets turned around once on his way to Barney’s Steakhouse, especially when Scott falls into his lap, while he’s driving, because Isaac decided to sneakily poke him in the ribs from behind.

            They arrive after all the others, to a restaurant humming with the late dinner rush. The hostess at the front desk herds them into a lounge area to the left of the entrance. Most of the team is already seated, shouting and boisterous as beleaguered waiters and waitresses attempt to coax orders out of them. Between his teammates Stiles can see a small stage at the back of the room with a karaoke machine perched on top. It brings to light just how crazy Finstock is, knowing he would bring a whole crowd of testosterone-fueled teenagers to a restaurant on karaoke night. _Willingly_.

            Stiles sits down at two tables that have been pushed together with Derek, Scott, Isaac, Allison, Boyd and Erica. Jackson, Danny and Lydia sit at the table behind theirs, the least rowdy table of all.

            Finstock’s steps onto the stage right as they’re finding their seats. The microphone shrieks with feedback when he clears his throat.

            “Now, Barney himself gave me permission to use this lounge—”

            Except he totally didn’t, because Barney is retired and there are other patrons besides the Beacon Hills High populace seated in the lounge, glancing, confused, at one another.

            “—so don’t you dare abuse this privilege. It won’t happen again. I’m serious. I don’t even know why I’m giving you this privilege now, except that we won! Good going, guys! Have fun!” He grins, and storms off the stage to muted laughter from the crowd.

            A waiter comes by to take their orders. Stiles gets the chicken cacciatore and Derek gets a blue steak. Of course.

            The next person to take the stage is an older gentleman, who entertains the crowd while they eat by singing _Hurt_ by Johnny Cash and nearly bursting into tears as he croons in a croaky mumble.Stiles is already giggly when their food arrives and Greenberg takes a turn. He’s so phenomenally bad Stiles can barely eat for how hard he’s laughing.

            Erica gives them a respite by striding up onto the stage to sing Patsy Cline’s _Walking After Midnight_. She sings it so well she might as well be Patsy Cline herself. She finishes a few minutes later, leaving the stage to a hushed, awed audience. The applause she receives is genuine, their table the most enthusiastic of all. A few more people go on stage, with varying levels of quality, before Isaac drags Boyd up onto the stage. Stiles is at least half certain it’s a dare. Especially when the first familiar strums of guitar ring out, and Isaac begins, face pink, with “I love myself—I want you to love me,” and nudges Boyd into adding, monotone: “I want you above me.”

            Stiles, and the rest of the room, completely lose it. Finstock tries and fails to boo them offstage. Finstock’s intent disapproval somehow bolsters Isaac into wrapping an arm around Boyd’s shoulders and belting out the chorus.

            “I don’t want anybody else! When I think about you, I touch myself!”

            Stiles just happens to glance over at Derek – he _just happens_ to do it a lot, these days – and it’s like he’s been punched in the chest. Derek is laughing, legitimately laughing, a hand over his mouth as if to hide the fact. But Stiles knows he is, because he can see his eyes crinkling, the flash of teeth between his fingers, and his cheeks are high and flushed. This, _this_ is why Stiles tries so hard to draw a smile out of him. Derek could kill people with how disarming his smile is.

            Maybe that’s why, when Boyd and Isaac leave the stage to catcalls and riotous applause, Stiles drags Scott to his feet despite his vocal complaints to climb onstage. Once they’re up there, with the lights blazing in his face, he finds way too many eyes staring back at him. Oh, boy. This was probably a mistake. Allison cheers them on, however, and so does Isaac. And, okay, it was a last second idea, but it was Stiles’s. He puts on a brave face that Scott doesn’t share at all.

            They argue over the Ramones and Blink-182 for a minute or two until Stiles stumbles upon a selection he can’t resist.

            “Ooh, Disney. Perfect.”

            “No, no—” Scott says, panicking, but too late, Stiles has already selected a song.

            “This is perfect for you, Scott,” Stiles says, into the microphone, while Scott hesitantly picks up a second microphone from its stand.

            “No, we’ve already—” but he cuts himself off when his own voice echoes through the speakers, his cheeks darkening. The song begins to play at the same and Stiles decides to start them off.

            “There you see her, sitting there across the way. She don’t got a lot to say,” Stiles begins, heart pounding. “But there’s something about her, and you don’t know why, but you’re dying to try—you wanna kiss the girl!”

            Allison lets out a shriek of laughter, and Danny whistles from behind their table. Stiles sings the next few lines with growing enthusiasm, and, seeing Scott slowly side-stepping away from him, grabs him by the arm and pulls him back.

            “Sing with me now!” He elbows Scott pointedly in the ribs.

            “Sha-la-la-la-la-la, my, oh my,” Scott squeaks, into the microphone. Stiles slaps him on the back while Allison yells, “Yeah, Scott!” between cupped hands.

            Scott gathers encouragement from the crowd, enough to sing the _whoa whoa’s_ and _sha-la-la-la-la-la’s_ between Stiles’s lines. Their whole table is cracking up, either at them or at Derek, who is hiding his face behind a hand and shaking his head. Stiles and Scott reach the end of the song together, and it’s almost a proper duet, Scott as the frog and Stiles as Sebastian, as they grip each other dramatically to finish off with:

            “Go on, you gotta—”

            “Kiss the girl!”

            “Go on and—”

            “Kiss the girl!”

            The two of them bow to the ensuing applause, flushed and laughing, and Stiles throws in a curtsy just to see Derek laugh. Once they jump off the stage, Allison meets them halfway to kiss Scott, to yet more applause, and Stiles is about ready to float away into the stratosphere with how _content_ he is. Which is something he didn’t think possible, in a group of people that includes Jackson, and Derek’s Dick Brigade. Derek’s hand is still plastered to his forehead when they sit down again. Stiles nudges him with a foot, beaming over at him.

            “We’re pretty awesome, aren’t we?”

            He shoots Stiles the most pathetic excuse for a glare ever.

            “I don’t know why I associate with you people.”

            “You love it,” says Boyd through a mouthful of potato.

            “No, no I don’t.”

            Derek shakes his head at Stiles, lips tight with repressed laughter, eyes bright, and Stiles has never seen him lie so badly in his life.

 

***

 

            It must be the first time in ages when the Sheriff actually has a Saturday evening off. They celebrate with Star Wars movies and a home cooked dinner courtesy of Stiles. He serves his best chilli recipe with a side of steamed asparagus and garlic bread, and they eat on TV trays in the living room. When they’re done Stiles even provides dessert—a banana milkshake for himself and a blueberry smoothie for his dad. He sits down with his shake to Han Solo cutting into a dead tauntaun, and barely three minutes of slurping pass before Dad breaks the silence to ask:

            “Something on your mind, Stiles?”

            Stiles has been chewing absently on the straw of his banana milkshake without actually drinking it since he sat down. He spits it out.

            “Uh. I don’t know. Why?”

            “You’ve been even more distracted than usual,” he says, gesturing at the chewed-up straw. “Are you doing okay? Those friends of yours treating you well?”

            Stiles doesn’t think any normal parent would ask the last question, but Dad is probably so unaccustomed to his son having more than one friend at a time he seems to be under the impression Stiles is making meth in Derek’s basement, or something.

            “Yeah, Dad, they’re treating me well,” he says, abruptly and inappropriately thinking of Derek pinning him to the floor in this very living room. “Really well.”

            His dad raises an eyebrow, taking another sip of his smoothie. He doesn’t make a face about the smoothie like he did with the asparagus, at least. Stiles sucks on his straw for a while, and then words abruptly tumble out of his mouth when he least expects it.

            “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask,” he says. He has to put his glass down, his stomach too restless in the face of what he has on his mind. “If, uh, theoretically, I—”

            “Oh, boy, we’re off to a good start.”

            “No, listen, Dad,” Stiles whines, and Dad sobers a little. “If, if theoretically you found out someone you’ve known for years liked you—what would you do?”

            “I don’t know, Stiles. I’m gonna stop calling this a ‘theory,’ first. It just makes things easier, all right?” Stiles nods frantically, and he continues. “Do you like this person back? We _are_ talking romantically when we say ‘like’, right?”

            “Yes, it’s romantic, and—” Stiles takes a careful breath in through his nose, and out through his mouth. “I think I like him. I didn’t realize it was even an option until he sort of really blatantly implied he liked me a while ago. I mean. It was blatant for _him._ But yeah. I do like him.”

            His dad doesn’t react to the male pronouns at all, and Stiles’s love for him soars to the greatest heights. Dad’s blank stare and tone of voice, however, state that Stiles is being an idiot.

            “What are you asking me, exactly?” he says.

            “What do I _do_?” 

            Dad sips his smoothie and swallows as slowly as humanly possible, digesting Stiles’s question while Stiles gnaws at his straw again.

            “Well, have you told him you feel the same way?”

            “No. I didn’t know what to say. I froze. And then he changed the subject, and I let him, and we played Mario Kart. And I haven’t mentioned it again! And neither has he! I fucked things up, didn’t I?”

            “Language,” Dad says, automatically. “No, Stiles. You’re fine. The same thing happened with your mother and me, you know. I was a mess when we were in college, trying to figure out if she liked me back. I finally went up to her after class with a bouquet of flowers, all sweaty. I felt like I was going to puke. But I asked her out.” Dad chuckles. His mouth is shaky and sad, but his eyes are crinkling with fondness. “She told me she hated daisies, but that she was willing to look past them if I took her out.”

            “‘Cause daisies smell like farts,” Stiles says, laughing at the memory of his mother ripping them out of the garden like weeds. It’s hard, talking about his mom—it always is. But the good memories keep her alive.

            It had been a difficult lesson to learn. A week after Mom had died, Stiles had called the Hale house in a panic, screaming at Talia about Dad throwing all their old photo albums into a garbage bag. She had arrived at their house alone. As easy as breathing she talked Stiles out of a panic attack, and then she had convinced Dad not to throw away all the memories of his wife. Talia had kept the garbage bag for a while, until, months later, Dad had asked for them back.

            They still don’t talk about Mom much. The wound is too deep for both of them. But the wound is healing and strengthening, and it gets easier every day.

            “Anyway,” says Dad, “you just need to tell Derek. Be romantic. Do whatever feels right. If he feels the same way about you then he’ll look past how sweaty or awkward you are and you’ll both be fine. Trust me.”

            Stiles’s heart climbs up to his throat. He tries to swallow past it with a mouthful of banana milkshake, but his voice is creaky when he speaks.           

            “You knew it was Derek?”

            “You were being pretty obvious, Stiles. I just saw you playing Mario Kart with him a few days ago.”

            Stiles collapses face-first onto his TV tray and nearly knocks over his milkshake. He moans in despair.

            Dad pats him on the head.

            “It’ll be okay, son,” he says. “As long as you’re not lying about him being a criminal, I think you and Derek would be good for each other.”

            “Thanks, Dad,” he mutters, sarcastically, even though he means it. 

 

***

 

            Stiles is rooting through his locker for his economics textbook on a Wednesday when Derek leans against the locker beside him with a cursory, “hey.” Stiles jumps at the sound of his voice—he had expected it to be Scott, or Isaac, or anyone but the subject of every sexual fantasy he’s had during the last two weeks. Derek is beside him in a deliciously tight green t-shirt and a half-smile at his general idiocy, and Stiles is ready to kiss him right then and there. But he doesn’t. Even though it would be the perfect time. There aren’t too many people in the hall around them, and it would be just the two of them. Kissing.

            But Stiles is not, and has never been, that brave.

            “Oh, uh, hey,” says Stiles, glancing down at Derek’s mouth on impulse. He wets his lips, and his eyes dart up to Derek’s to find him watching Stiles’s own mouth. Shit. Shit, shit, shit—

            “Hey, Derek,” someone calls out, and Stiles really, really wants to punch Jackson, more than ever before, when he sees him standing behind them with that stupid fucking face of his. “Nice job on the field the other night. Too bad you were too busy pining over Kate whatshername to score the winning goal.” 

            Derek winces like he’s been punched in the gut. Stiles’s mouth falls open and he actually, legitimately sees red. He had been getting along with Jackson so well, too. Or they had been tolerating each other, at least. Sort of.

            “Excuse me?”

            “You heard me. Anyone with half a brain cell could guess that he and Kate were fu—”

            Stiles doesn’t hear the rest before his fist connects with Jackson’s jaw. It’s so satisfying to feel the meaty connection of flesh and muscle and bone that he does it again, suddenly straddling Jackson on the ground, deaf to everything around him. It isn’t until the third time he hits Jackson that he’s being yanked away by someone’s hands under his armpits. He’s saying, “fuck you, Jackson, fuck you,” over and over again until he realizes Mr. Harris is there, dragging Jackson up to his feet. Harris is _always_ there when a fight breaks out. It’s like he _knows_. He kinda wants to punch him, too.

            Derek’s the one who pulled him away, Stiles realizes, simply by the way Derek’s hands feel hotter than anyone else’s on him.

            “I don’t care what you’re fighting about, Stilinski, that is no excuse to act like wild animals on school property. Detention, all three of you,” says Harris, as Stiles goes limp in Derek’s arms.

            “Harris would marry detentions if he could,” Stiles mutters to the floor, once Harris has helped Jackson to the nurse’s office and Derek finally lets him go. The sparse number of students who had gathered around disperse the instant Stiles notices they’re there.

            “You didn’t have to do that,” says Derek, straightening Stiles’s plaid button-up.

            “Yeah. I kinda did,” Stiles says, chest flaring hotly again at how _wrecked_ Derek looks after witnessing what Stiles was willing to do for him. But, fuck, Stiles is willing to do way more for Derek—for all of his loved ones. So much that it terrifies him, sometimes.

            “You’re an idiot,” Derek tells him, voice breathy with disbelief and something like affection, as he follows Stiles back to his locker to get his textbook. Stiles succeeds at finding it this time. Derek gestures to Stiles’s knuckles, where they’re already starting to bruise. “I heal way faster than you. I should have beaten him up.”

            A laugh escapes Stiles, unbidden, even though his chest and knuckles throb, and his vision is still blurry in the aftermath.

            “You should have said something,” Stiles says. “We could have double-teamed him.” 

            Derek shrugs as they walk to economics class together, bumping shoulders and biting back smiles.

            “There’s always next time,” says Derek.

 

***

 

            Stiles sits in the middle of the empty chemistry classroom beside Derek while Jackson sits at the back with his arms crossed and a nice bruise blooming over the left side of his face. Harris ignores them all, marking papers with a scratchy red pen at his desk. Stiles tries to work on some homework while he’s there, but his arm keeps colliding with Derek’s, and it’s crazy, how long Stiles has been quiet. He has to say something.

            “You know, you really didn’t have to do that,” Derek whispers, when Stiles opens his mouth to speak. He’s not looking at Stiles, but bent over The Great Gatsby and taking notes for an English essay. Derek has been glancing at the bruises forming on Stiles’s knuckles all day. Stiles has been aching all day, but it’s not just his knuckles. It’s an ache rooted deep in bones, in his blood, fighting to tear through the very surface of his skin. He sighs hard, his papers rustling under his hand.

            “Derek, do you like me?” Stiles asks in such a rush the words stumble over one another. He’s not sure they were even in English, when he sees Derek frowning, but Derek eventually answers, quietly, almost begrudgingly.

            “Yes.”

            Stiles can hear his own pulse rise. He fumbles with the corner of a paper in front of him. The corner rips. Derek’s still trying to concentrate on his essay, even though his pen and his eyes aren’t moving anymore.

            “Like, romantically?”

            “ _Yes_ , Stiles, shut up,” he hisses, with a glance at Harris, who is pointedly ignoring them.

            “For how long?”

            “I don’t know,” Derek says. “Maybe since that time you kicked Jackson in the shin for saying police officers were stupid? I really—”

            “Hale and Stilinski, unless you want another week’s detention, you can both keep your mouths shut,” says Harris, without glancing up from his papers.

            Stiles is quiet for all of ten seconds.

            “That was in first grade!” he whisper-screams. “We weren’t even friends back then!”

            “I know,” says Derek, jaw clenched like he’s seriously reconsidering ever liking Stiles in the first place.

            “And Kate—”

            “She was a distraction.”

            “Oh my god, you _rebounded_ with Kate?”

            “Shut up,” Derek half-snarls, half-whispers.

            Stiles’s nerves are twanging, desperate to be free from the confines of the classroom, and its motionless clock, and Harris. And Jackson, especially, who Stiles can _feel_ glaring at the back of his head. Regardless, Stiles shuts his mouth long enough to work on his own English homework. He kills three whole minutes with two whole sentences.

            Stiles’s attention is yanked away from his homework by Derek’s pinkie and ring finger, stroking into the skin of his left wrist.

            At a glance, Derek is reading his book one-handed, as though the need to touch Stiles is a habit he doesn’t realize he has. Which is _ridiculous_. How could he not realize what he’s doing to Stiles? Werewolves are supposed to _know_.

             Stiles shivers at the contact, goose bumps rising along his skin. He tries for all of two seconds to act like it isn’t affecting him. He lets his pen roll out of his right hand to bump his fingers against Derek’s, to say, without saying it, that he likes Derek, too. His skin is tingling, from his fingers and wrist and outward, the heavy prickle of it collecting in his abdomen.

            Stiles bites his lower lip, worries over it with his teeth, trying not to go crazy from how turned on he is by the simple of touch of Derek’s fingers brushing against his. But, no, he _is_ going crazy. Too crazy. He breathes in, out, trying to soothe the rapid beat of his heart, but somehow it only worsens matters when he catches Derek’s scent. It’s a ghost of a smell, yet one he’s known since their youth—like earth and cinnamon and smoke.

            God. He wants to kiss Derek so bad.

            “Derek,” he says, in a low voice, “you have no idea how badly I want to kiss you right now.”

            “I think I do,” Derek murmurs, fingers trailing over the ticklish pulse of Stiles’s wrist. Stiles is scared out of his wits, can feel the sweat gathering in his armpits, at his temples, above his lip, but Dad had said ‘be romantic’. So he decides, to hell with it, he’ll improvise. 

            “Do you wanna kiss the Stiles?” he sings, a little louder than Derek’s mumble. Derek jerks his hand away from Stiles’s and glances quickly over at Harris, who has raised his eyes to peer over his glasses, birdlike and ominous. “Sha-la-la-la-la-la,” Stiles continues, loving how Derek’s face falls. It only takes another second more for Derek’s composure to utterly _collapse_ with the horror of realizing just what Stiles is about to do.

            “Don’t stop now, don’t try to hide it how,” Stiles bellows. Both Jackson and Harris jolt in their seats like a gun went off. “You wanna kiss the Stiles!”

            “Stiles!” shouts Harris, but Stiles barrels right over him, spinning Derek’s chair around with as much strength as he can muster to take Derek by the shoulders and sing in his face. Derek’s ears are flaming as he glares at Stiles, trying, and failing, to telepathically silence him. “Sha-la-la-la-la-la! Float along, listen to the song—”

            “Detention for the next two months if you do not shut up right now—”

            “THE SONG SAY KISS THE STILES!”

            “Stiles! Be quiet!” Derek hisses, his eyebrows drawn but his mouth twitching, unsure whether to smile.

            “MUSIC PLAY! DO WHAT THE MUSIC SAY!”

            “Just kill me now, please,” says Jackson.

            “YOU WANNA KISS THE STILES!”

            Stiles smacks a wet kiss onto Derek’s cheek and returns to his original position as though nothing happened, crossing his leg at the knee. He carefully feigns indifference in the face of Harris’s rage. Harris stands, hands splayed out on his desk. Abruptly, he smiles, the most terrifying smile Stiles knows, which is almost worse than Dad’s just before he grounds him.

            “If you’re under the impression that I will overlook romantic overtures in my classroom, you are sorely mistaken,” he says. “In fact, I don’t care if you _propose marriage_ to Mr. Hale right here and right now, I’m still going to give all of you an extra half-hour in detention, and you, Mr. Stilinski, will get another two months.”

            Harris sits down again, daring Stiles to say a word of complaint with his trademark I-hate-Stiles glare.

            The punishment is not nearly as bad as Stiles expected. Pleased, he mouths ‘worth it’ at Derek, who has to scrub a hand over his face to wash away the last five minutes of his life. Stiles proceeds to do his homework like a good student for the next half hour. Jackson seethes.

            It’s awesome.

            When they finally get out of detention at five-thirty, it is only then that the reality of what Stiles had done in detention hits him. He glances over at Derek about eighty-five times, as they walk down the vacant hallway towards the exit. Derek seems to be more than happy to walk, silent, beside him. Maybe Derek draws the line at The Little Mermaid. Maybe Stiles has eliminated himself as anyone even remotely sexual to Derek. How is Stiles supposed to know these things? He didn’t know Derek even _liked him_ two weeks ago.

            Stiles is about to start truly panicking when a hand snags him by the arm, swinging his body around. He’s spun towards Derek, whose face is hard and unreadable. He fists Stiles’s shirt in both hands and walks him backwards against someone’s locker, where he smashes his lips against Stiles’s. Stiles jerks away on impulse, realizes, _oh, shit,_ _I’m being kissed_ , and grabs Derek’s face in both hands to anchor him back in.

            At first it’s just a clumsy meeting of mouths, every part of Stiles’s body on fire under the wetness of Derek’s lips and the scrape of his stubble. But then Derek licks at Stiles’s bottom lip, sucking it into his mouth, and the moan it elicits opens him up to a whole new world of kissing. Derek licks into Stiles’s mouth and Stiles licks back with clumsy enthusiasm, his fingers tangled in Derek’s thick hair. The simple act of kissing shouldn’t be so erotic. But it really, really is, and Stiles hasn’t been kissed by anyone.

            He’s feverish and panting and half-hard in his jeans when Derek breaks off the kiss. Derek is worse off than Stiles, his lips red and wet and his chest heaving. He trails his mouth lightly over the corner of Stiles’s lip, across his jaw, and Stiles’s hips cant towards him of their own volition.

            “The Little Mermaid?” Derek says, under Stiles’s ear, drawing a shiver out of him. “Again? Seriously?”

            “I was… trying to be romantic?”

            “Where did you learn that particular definition of romance?” Derek asks, peppering kisses across Stiles’s throat.

            “Disney, obviously,” Stiles says, breathless. “Okay, maybe a mixture of Disney and my dad, and—and maybe Han Solo. The song was stuck in my head—I don’t know! I’m new here.”

            Derek chuckles, kissing him full on the mouth again, gentler than before, with barely any tongue.

            “I don’t think Han Solo ever serenaded Princess Leia,” he says, into Stiles’s mouth.

            “Whoa, dude, you totally just called yourself Princess Leia.”

            “Well, you _are_ a half-witted, scruffy-looking nerf herder.”

            Derek nips at his lip, and that’s when Stiles hears footsteps.

            “Holy Christ, just go home, you complete _assholes_ ,” says Jackson, not even stopping as he slams his way out the door. Stiles is struck by an overwhelming desire to chase after Jackson and break his nose. But he stays, because Derek’s hands have fallen to his hips and he’s stroking circles into his hipbones with his thumbs.

            “I guess we should go before Harris gives you any more detentions,” says Derek, leaving another lingering kiss on Stiles’s lips. He parts from Stiles way too casually, and Stiles whines at the loss. He follows after Derek’s magnetic pull, out into the blue light of dusk. It’s doubly cold on his flushed skin in the late November air.

            Derek walks Stiles to his Jeep. It’s actually, properly romantic. It’s so much better than humiliating himself in detention in the alleged name of romance. 

            “Well,” Stiles says, pocketing his hands “this is me.”

            He looks up in time to see Derek’s eyes flicker wanly with that gorgeous werewolf blue. Stiles’s stomach drops to his toes and Derek grabs Stiles behind the neck to kiss him again.

            It takes another ten minutes of kissing against Stiles’s Jeep before either of them can muster enough willpower to go their separate ways.

 

***

 

            News of the dorky benchwarmer serenading the semi-popular co-captain of the lacrosse team spreads through the school like a plague. It’s all thanks to Jackson, who undoubtedly sees it as petty vengeance for his bruised face. Stiles hasn’t even reached his locker yet and he’s been stared at, given several thumbs-up, and received more than a few wolf-whistles on his way there. He finds Erica, Boyd and Isaac waiting by his locker with identical knowing looks.

            Stiles shoves through them like they aren’t there in an effort to get to his locker and hopefully hide from the world in his chemistry class, but Erica pushes him away with a hand on his chest.

            “So,” she says, digging sharp nails into his shirt. “Are the rumours true?”

            “Huh? What rumours? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

            “The ones where you sang ‘A Whole New World’ to Derek in detention,” says Boyd.

            “I heard it was that one from Mulan—what was it? ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’?”

            “What makes you think these rumours are true? I thought you guys were above gossip.”

            “Oh, shut up,” snaps Erica, grinning.

            “I live with Derek,” pipes up Isaac, unhelpfully. “It was pretty obvious when he got home that something was up.”

            Stiles levels Isaac with a withering look.

            “I hate you.”

            “So it’s true?” asks Boyd.

            Stiles rolls his eyes heavenward.

            “I guess it is,” he says, rotating away from Erica to get to his locker, stripping off his jacket. “But it was ‘Kiss the Stiles’. You know. Like from the Little Mermaid?”

            He hangs up his jacket while they laugh way too gleefully. Stiles escapes their evil clutches with his textbook, but not his dignity, especially when Isaac shouts, “Later, Ariel!” at his back. He jogs the rest of the way to chemistry.

            Stiles’s nausea and light-headedness don’t go away when he reaches the chemistry room. Jackson is there, smug even with his bruised face, Danny beside him with a pitying smile. He mouths, “sorry” at Stiles, who merely flaps a limp hand at him in response. 

            “How are the bruises?” Stiles asks Jackson as he passes his desk. Jackson’s smile wilts only slightly.

            “Good. How’s the love life? Derek dump your sorry ass yet?”

            “Jesus, Jackson, give it a rest!” says Danny, and Stiles might actually kiss him, were he not, indeed, involved with Derek.

            “Nope!” says Stiles, beaming at Jackson. “Did Lydia finally realize she’s too good for you?”

            Jackson squints at him, and Danny turns his head slowly towards Stiles, jaw clenched. Stiles goes to sit down at his desk before he can provoke further wrath from _Danny_ , of all people. Scott rushes into the room two seconds later, wide-eyed and frazzled as he plops down beside Stiles. Stiles knows what he’s going to say before he even says it.

            “I know, I know, Derek and I are kinda dating,” he says, as Scott says, “You knew Derek was a _werewolf?_ ”

            They gape at each other.

            “What?” They say in unison.

            “No, you first,” says Stiles.

            “Not—what? You’re _dating_ Derek?” He puts down his backpack, not breaking eye contact with Stiles. Stiles nods, slowly. “But he’s a werewolf!”

            “I know!”

            Scott stares at Stiles for an extended period of time, the wheels grinding away in his head. He doesn’t even notice when Allison passes and waves nervously at them, sitting at the back with Lydia.

            “Allison told me her family are werewolf hunters last night,” Scott says at last. “She saw you on the Hale property the other day when they went to stop her grandfather from killing them. And, like, she wanted to wait to tell me about the ‘family business’, but she was afraid you would tell me, first.”

            Allison must have understood his and Scott’s friendship from the get-go, then, if she assumed there were absolutely no secrets between them. Stiles feels a stab of guilt. He hadn’t even texted Scott about kissing Derek last night. Instead he had spent the evening texting Derek. 

            “Are you mad I didn’t say anything?”

            “No,” Scott says, without missing a beat. “The hunter thing was for Allison to tell me. I’m mad you didn’t tell me about you and Derek, though. Who is a Hale. Who are all werewolves.”

            Stiles shrugs.

            “You’re dating an Argent.” They pause, again, as Mr. Harris arrives and begins pulling papers out of his briefcase. “Man, this is like some ‘bro’ version of Romeo and Juliet. With werewolves.”

            Scott laughs.

            “Yeah, it’s weird. But if you’re happy…”

            “I am if you are.”

            Scott smiles, blinding and sincere, and says, “I am.” His smile wilts a bit as something occurs to him. “As long as the Argents don’t kill me when I go over there on Thanksgiving.”

            “Okay, well, if _you_ survive, and _I_ survive, then I’ll be happy.”

 

***

 

            Stiles’s next class is economics, which he shares with Derek, Scott and Allison. And Jackson, who he pays no attention to. Derek isn’t there yet, which is probably healthier for Stiles’s nerves. He greets Allison with an awkward wave, standing over her desk and waiting for Scott to kiss her on the cheek and sits behind her.

            “Hey, Stiles. Congrats on you and Derek,” she says, when he doesn’t move right away. Stiles gapes at her while Scott grins so wide Stiles is sure he’ll hear his jaw crack.

            “Wait, you’re—okay with it?”

            “Why wouldn’t I be? The Hales might be werewolves, Stiles, but they’re good people. And so are we. I’m not my Aunt Kate.”

            Stiles goes weak at the knees. He could kiss her, just like he could kiss Danny, and Scott, for good measure.

            “Hi, Derek,” says Allison, nodding at someone behind him. Stiles jumps a foot in the air when a warm hand touches the small of his back.

            “Hey, Allison,” he answers, brusquely polite. He directs Stiles to his seat at the back, and they sit there, without speaking, until Stiles says, “Allison is awesome.”

            “For an Argent,” Derek concedes.

            Once the class starts, Stiles alters his routine of bothering Derek to something even better. Derek moves his foot back at some point halfway through the lesson, and it translates as an invitation for Stiles to stretch out his leg and clumsily rub an ankle against Derek’s calf. When the period ends, Stiles is dizzy with how much he wants to kiss Derek again.

            Derek obliges him in an empty classroom during lunch. He does it a second time during their free period, in the bathroom, until Danny walks in on them, says, “Oh, whoops—sorry. But is this really the time or the place?” and the two of them are forced to leave. Stiles’s lips are sore, slightly chapped, when, after Stiles’s detention, they kiss some more against a tree behind the bleachers, their breath fogging between them.

 

***

 

            For the next week they only get to kiss fleetingly during school, just enough for Stiles to be completely devastated by his own arousal, to drown in the heat of Derek’s body. Stiles is jerking off so much lately he’s worried about chafing.

            He must be addicted to Derek, if the anxious prickle in his chest when they’re apart – when they’re not touching – is any indication. He tries to act like nothing’s changed. He even goes to a movie with Scott on Friday, but Scott talks nonstop about how great things are with Allison, like, sex-wise, and all Stiles can think about when he does is how much he wishes he could talk similarly about Derek. All he has in his inventory is a collection of stolen moments in empty classrooms and one incident, in particular, where Stiles had accidentally slipped a leg between Derek’s and he had gasped in a way that will haunt him for weeks.

            Not that he’s complaining. He is the most grateful man alive, to be honest. Whenever they do get a chance to be alone together, difficult though it is with Stiles’s dad off work at night and Derek’s bustling household, it feels like Stiles is being _savoured_. Like Derek is slowly and methodically taking him apart by the seams. It’s as incredible as it is unbearable. 

            Maybe that’s why when Stiles wakes up on Thanksgiving morning he has jittery bones and an uneasy stomach. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to him, because he used to go to the Hale house for dinner all the time. But they aren’t just friends anymore. Yesterday’s journey behind the bleachers had proven that. He’s still not quite sure where he stands with Derek, exactly, except they are now friends who make out a lot.

            He feels like he _should_ know, when he’s going to be surrounded by Derek’s family, who may or may not be able to tell when Stiles is lying. And who can smell things like arousal. He trusts them enough to know they would not maim him, but whether he dies of embarrassment is an entirely different story.

            Stiles takes forever to get ready. He showers, thoroughly soaping himself down, then agonizes over what to wear for another two hours, running twitchy fingers through his damp hair. His dad comes home from work to find him shouting at clothes on his bed for being unstylish and ugly. Dad frowns, perplexed, as stands in Stiles’s doorway.

            “I’m, uh, off to have a nap,” he says, brushing off Stiles’s typical quirkiness in favour of a more sane conversation. 

            “Which one, dad? Red or blue?”

            “What are you doing with suit jackets?”

            “I don’t know! I just—I don’t want to look like crap.”

            “Relax, kid,” he says, stepping into the room to pat Stiles on the shoulder. “It’s a casual dinner. Wear what you always wear.” He ruffles Stiles’s hair, leaning in to look him in the eye. “Is this about Derek?”

            “Uh,” Stiles says, gagging on air. “Maybe?”

            “You’ll be _fine_.”

            “But, we’re, like, sort of dating now? And his family…” The breath he lets out is a death rattle.

            “That’s great!” His dad says, smiling, without the tiny edge of irritation that typically precedes smiling at his son. “Like I told you before—if he likes you, he shouldn’t care what you’re wearing, Stiles. You could go naked and—don’t go naked,” he adds, at the look on Stiles’s face, “but, you know. It’s Derek. It’s Derek’s _family_. You’ll be okay.” 

            “I don’t think I trust your advice,” Stiles says. “Last time you told me to be romantic, even if I’m an idiot, and I ended up with like, a billion detentions.”

            His dad has to pinch the bridge of his nose.

            “Is that why you’ve got all those detentions? Oh, boy, of course you did. Well, was it worth it?”

            Stiles bends to pick a piece of lint off one of the suit jackets laid out on the bed.

            “It was.”

            “Good.” He clasps Stiles firmly on the shoulder again. “Will you be okay driving there on your own? I’ll be there before dinner, once I get a nap in.”

            “That’s fine,” says Stiles, and it is, because somehow he feels less jittery with Dad there to talk him down. “Thanks. For. You know. The—” Stiles flaps his hands at the suit jackets, at his dad, and at the situation in general.

            “Oh, no problem. Just quit worrying, all right? And _be safe_ ,” says his dad, gripping Stiles’s neck in what is either an affectionate or warning manner, depending on the situation. Right now Stiles thinks it’s the former.

            Dad shuffles off to take his nap, leaving Stiles to waffle over his clothes for another half hour before he decides to fuck it and wear his blue striped hoodie over a plain grey t-shirt and blue jeans. He practically has to sprint out of the house with his banana cream pie so he doesn’t change his mind again. He taps out a beat on his steering wheel in lieu of music all the way to the Hale house. When he arrives, the porch is decorated with pumpkins from the garden Talia keeps out back, and there are construction paper turkeys made from tiny hands taped lovingly to the front windows.

            He smiles at them, fleetingly, as he drives past. He finds a spot to park in the makeshift parking lot beside the house, and there are more cars there than usual, which probably means Derek’s grandma and Uncle Ray are already there. His anxiety worsens twofold when he realizes he might have to see Derek’s grandma. Werewolf or not, Vera Hale scares the crap out of him. Talia wasn’t wrong when she stated Derek gets his grumpiness from her. But at least Derek _likes him_ , as evidenced by the frequent kissing. Though he’d prefer it if Vera kept the kissing to a bare minimum, thanks.

            Stiles takes a few soothing breaths as he gets out of his Jeep, pie in hand, to crunch through autumn leaves to the front door. He’s only stepped onto the first creaky stair when something streaks past his peripheral vision. He turns in time to see a tiny girl no older than five running through the trees, clutching her mouth to keep her giggles at bay. The knees of her white pants are covered in dirt, her cheeks ruddy and her blonde hair askew. Stiles knows instantly she’s Gabrielle, Peter’s daughter. She was _tiny_ the last time he saw her.

            She pays Stiles no attention as she searches for a hiding spot. He gapes at her retreating form for a while, pie held aloft, wondering what he should do. He’s lost sight of her when, a minute later, Derek plods by on the same route she was just on.

            “Hey, Derek!”

            Derek’s head jerks up, as though he’d been scenting for his cousin so determinedly he hadn’t noticed Stiles or his pie. Derek’s almost as filthy as Gabrielle, a smudge of something on his jaw, and Stiles’s heart hiccups at the sight of him.

            “She went—”

            “Shh!” Derek puts a finger to his lips, points at his ear, and continues towards where Stiles had seen Gabrielle patter off. It somehow endears Stiles even further to find out Derek knows exactly where his werewolf cousin is, but doesn’t want to give the fact away to her sensitive ears.

            “Pie?”

            “Put it the fridge.” He says it like it should be obvious, but it really feels like it isn’t. It’s been way too long since Stiles has come over for dinner. He nods, bravely, he thinks, and says, “I’ll be right back.” He shoulders his way into the Hale residence through the heavy front door to be greeted by the cacophony of clattering cookware and Laura and William shouting in the kitchen. He’s shutting the door behind him just as Isaac bursts out of the kitchen like a startled cat, eyes wide, his arms full of rumpled clothing.

            “Isaac?”

            “Not now, Stiles, sorry, there’s a naked werepup running around out there somewhere,” Isaac says in a breathless rush, whizzing past Stiles and banging his way out the front door.

            Stiles stands there at a loss for a long moment. Eventually he shakes his head and carries on through the door Isaac left open. The right door on the far wall, beyond the wide staircase, leads into the kitchen, the left, on the other side of the staircase, into the living room. He takes the right. The kitchen has a bright, open floor plan with the same hardwood as the rest of the house, the dining room connected, opening it further, to the front of the house. The same square-paneled sliding doors as the ones leading to the study connect the living room to the kitchen, and the dining room to the foyer.

            The central island is covered in bowls and cutting boards. The four elements on the stovetop are full, the pots and pans on its surface steaming and crackling. Laura and William are sweating over the cooking while Peter and his wife, Kristen, sit on the stools drinking white wine unhelpfully.

            “No, dad, I told _you_ to prepare the asparagus. _I’ll_ get the ham in the oven, just— _no,_ get out of my way,” Laura snaps, as she bumps into William.

            “I already finished the asparagus! It’s right there!” William shouts back at her, pointing exaggeratedly at the asparagus on the counter.

            Stiles has never quite understood their relationship. Derek insists they get along, but to Stiles it has always looked a strange, bickering battle for dominance. Sometimes it even rivaled the bickering Laura and Derek got up to as kids.

            Through their shouting and the clamour of kitchenware Stiles can hear Talia’s bark of a laugh in the living room, no doubt sitting with her brother-in-law and mother. It kindles a flame in Stiles’s breast, just to be standing here, in the heat of the kitchen, in the presence of this family he’s known for years. He stands there much longer than necessary, soaking it in. Peter spots him standing on the threshold and grins sharply.

            “Hello, Stiles. Come on in!”

            “Stiles! It’s been too long!” says Kristen, as blonde and gorgeous as he remembers her, but also as evil as her husband. Case in point: they are in the kitchen drinking wine while Isaac chases after their naked child outside. “Is that a banana cream pie I smell? Ooh, Andrew _loves_ banana!”

            “Yeah, it’s—I made it myself, so no guarantees,” he says, stilted, stepping into the room. Laura swoops in to rescue Stiles from awkward small talk, snagging the pie right out of his hands.

            “Smells good to me,” she says, like that’s all that matters. She delivers the pie to the refrigerator on the wall beside the double ovens and returns to punch Stiles lightly on the shoulder. “Took you long enough.” She says the next under her breath, exasperated, and it’s evident she is not talking about dinner, but her brother.

            “Laura, be nice. The Stilinskis have always arrived a little later to these things. We’ve come to accept that,” says William, washing carrots at the sink. Stiles can never tell when William’s being intentionally dense or not; he isn’t sure he wants to know what William knows.

            “Shut up, Dad, you don’t even know what we’re talking about!” Laura says over her shoulder.

            “Sure he does,” says Peter, smirking, and Stiles flushes to the roots of his hair. Laura rounds on Peter, hackles visibly rising, barely resisting the urge to let the wolf take over. Stiles has never seen Laura this protective over _him_ , of all people. A surge of affection threads itself into the patchwork of emotions that have been warring within him for the past eight hours.

            Peter merely shrugs at his niece, and says, “Why don’t you get Stiles to help you with the vegetables.”

            It’s more of a command than a question. Stiles can tell it irks Laura when she turns back to Stiles, eyes glittering with a sprinkle of blue. Her relationship is more straightforward with Peter than it is with her father. She merely _tolerates_ his scathing commentary and condescending manner. There is love there, Stiles thinks, but she saves most of it for the rest of her relatives. 

            “Why don’t _you_ help with the vegetables, Peter?” Stiles asks, and Laura relaxes, joint by joint. 

            “Not much of a cooker.”

            Stiles glances at Laura, who just rolls her eyes. Stiles takes off his jacket, and the hoodie underneath, throwing them over an empty stool beside a smirking Kristen.

            “What can I do?” he asks William. William beams at Stiles and gestures for him to come closer. And that is how Stiles gets roped into peeling and chopping several dozen homegrown carrots on the counter beside the sink for the next half-hour. Their sink is located in front of a bay window; the area behind the sink covered in Talia’s cacti and potted plants. It’s soothing to stand among them, listening to Laura argue heatedly with Peter and her father, in turns, while Kristen laughs and Peter gives the occasional input.

            Most of Stiles’s relatives live out of state. They usually only visit each other during Christmas. Derek’s family, his pack, are the next best thing. They have the affection, the pointless quarrels, and all the baggage. Even if Peter irritates him, and Kristen makes him more uncomfortable the more wine she drinks, he is okay with that. Maybe he even missed it.

            “So, you and Derek,” says William, abruptly, right beside him, after Peter and Kristen have wandered off into the living room. Stiles’s hand slips, and he just barely misses chopping off his pinkie finger. He gapes up at William where he’s standing beside Stiles brandishing a saucepan. “You be good to him, all right?” he tells him sternly, without even a hint of awkwardness. Stiles puts down the knife.

            It’s unnerving, to have a werewolf telling a harmless human to treat his werewolf son right. But Stiles is already nodding, numbly, waiting for the right words to come to him.

            “I’m trying my best—uh, sir,” says Stiles, clearing his throat when his voice cracks. William laughs loudly.

            “Good, good. No need for formalities, Stiles, I just wanted to get that out, you know—doing my fatherly duty for the sake of my son’s virtue. Or. Er. Possibly its lack thereof.” Stiles, growing hot in the already hot kitchen, looks up in time to see Laura glaring darkly at William from over the fridge door. William quails at the sight. He holds out the saucepan like a peace offering. “Carrots, please.”

            Stiles finishes chopping and piles the saucepan high with carrot coins.

            “Don’t worry, we haven’t actually done anythi—I don’t need to say that.” Stiles cuts himself off when Laura slams the fridge door and William drops a handful of carrots on the floor.

            “No, you really don’t,” says William, eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that is very reminiscent of Derek’s rare smiles. He claps Stiles on the back and collects the dropped carrots to throw in the garbage. He takes the saucepan to the island to start boiling them and preparing the brown sugar glaze. Laura stomps by Stiles with a giant bowl of peas and corn.

            “You’re hopeless,” she says, and Stiles silently agrees. He cleans up the carrot peelings he left all over the counter, his lips held carefully together to keep himself from blurting out any more incriminating comments. He’s just lucky Peter and Kristen had already left the room when William had brought up Derek. “If you keep embarrassing yourself like that I’m not gonna help you out when Dad starts with the third degree. Or the sex lectures. I promise both will be the worst torture you have ever experienced.”

            “Sex lectures?” Stiles whines. “My dad just keeps giving me pamphlets from Scott’s mom.”

            Laura laughs a haunted laugh.

            “Oh, my sweet summer child. No. You’ll get the whole nine yards. Detailed biology lessons and safe sex talks and real-life examples. From _his own life_. You don’t even want to _know_ aboutthe trauma I’ve been through.”

            “I can hear you,” William complains from where he is breaking apart ground beef in a frying pan. “As your father, I do deserve a little respect, don’t I?”

            “No, Dad. Not after what I’ve been through!”

            “What _you’ve_ been through? Laura, when your mother was in labour with you she broke my hand nine times. Nine!”

            “Do you see what I mean?” she asks Stiles.

            “I see,” he says, incapable of reining in his laughter.

            William and Laura’s next argument is ended before it can begin, however, when the sliding glass backdoor cracks open and Isaac slips inside, cheeks flushed from the cold and his curly hair askew. His clothes are also noticeably dirtier than when he had rushed past Stiles in the foyer earlier.

            “Was it Andy again?” asks Laura.

            “It was Andy again,” Isaac confirms, on a heavy exhale. He passes Stiles to wash his hands in the sink, sending a somewhat exhausted smile in his direction.            “Hey, Stiles,” he says, squirting dish soap onto his hands, “Derek was looking for you outside.”

            “Oh?” Stiles asks, hoping his heartbeat doesn’t ratchet up too blatantly for werewolf ears.

            “I think he might need rescuing from Peter’s demon spawn.”

            “Oh,” Stiles says again. Stiles is not the best with kids. He has no little cousins – none he’s met, anyway – and the last time he held Gabrielle she had wailed and punched him in the face with a chubby little fist. And yet Isaac seems to adore the kids, despite his insistence that they are evil. He thinks the assertions about their being demon spawn has more bearing on Peter and Kristen than it does on Andrew and Gabrielle. “Right, yeah, no, I’ll go save him.”

            “I’ll take over here,” says Isaac, his smile, as usual, sweeter than Stiles expects it to be. Isaac has a dark humour and sometimes he dresses like a Greaser, but he is, apparently, a baker who loves kids and comic books, and Stiles has seen him grinning over kitten videos on Youtube more than once. The sweetness tends to win out every time. Stiles throws out the pile of carrot peels he’d collected from the counter and puts his hoodie and jacket back on.

            “We’ll call you when it’s dinner if you’re not back,” says William, as Stiles opens the back door again.

            “And if you haven’t been cut into bite-sized pieces by the toddler,” Laura adds. Isaac huffs a laugh.

            Stiles steps outside, listening for the telltale sounds of children being carried by the breeze. It only takes a second to catch a joyful shriek from somewhere beyond the vegetables gardens. The gardens are already picked clean of everything but a few pumpkins and squash. He steps off the deck to walk through the grass path between them, past the browning flowerbeds and into the trees.

            Just as Stiles is mentally going through a list of horror movies that have featured children giggling, somebody screams and barrels right into his back, knocking the wind out of him as he’s thrown facedown into the leaves.

            “Derek!” the monster on his back shouts. “I defeated the dragon!”

            Stiles hears leaves crunching, and a chuckle from somewhere to his right.

            “Good job, Andy,” Derek says. Stiles can tell he’s smiling and wishes he could lift his head to see it. “Now let the poor dragon go. He’s innocent.”

            “But Derek! He was gonna sneak up on us and burn us all!”

            “Stiles is a good dragon. He wouldn’t do that. Don’t you remember Stiles?”

            “Andy, let ‘im go, Derek says he’s good,” says a tiny, adorable voice, pronouncing his name ‘Deh-wik’. “You’ll be a evil knight if you kill ‘im.”

            “Ugh, fine, but I bet you a million dollars he was the one who stole my clothes,” says Andy, finally getting off him. Derek helps Stiles to his feet, sweeping the leaves off Stiles’s clothes and thoroughly abusing the opportunity to ‘clean’ Stiles’s ass.

            “I thought you said a dragon burned them off?” Derek asks, casually, while Stiles tries not to blush under Derek’s attention and fails.

            “He, um, no, no, he was so fast I didn’t see!” says Andy, gesticulating wildly enough that he bounces on the balls of his bare, dirty feet. Andy is a miniature version of Peter and just as prone to mischief, but at eight years old he’s much cuter than his father. 

            “That’s one fast dragon, dude,” says Stiles. “But look at me, Andy; I have _too many_ clothes. Why would I go stealing them from you?” Andy smiles, shyly, when Stiles gestures at the three layers he’s wearing.

            “Hi, Stiles,” says Olivia, waving at him. Olivia is the daughter of Ray Asper, Derek’s other uncle. Stiles had always liked her best. He has no doubt it’s because even three years ago he had seen the spark of nerdiness in her. She looks a lot like how Laura did, at twelve, but with a rounder face and with brown eyes behind her glasses. The glasses convince him, right at that second, that she is not a werewolf like the majority of her family.

            Andy’s strength is a bit of a giveaway; Stiles can already feel a bruise forming where Andy collided with his hip. Which, presumably, means Gabrielle is one, too. She’d had a mean right hook even as a one-year-old.

            “Hey, Olivia,” he replies, waving back.

            “Derek,” pipes up Gabrielle, tugging on his jacket, “is—is Stiohs your friend?”

            Derek smiles down at her, with warmth that goes straight to Stiles’s gut, as he gently ruffles Gabrielle’s messy blonde hair.

            “He’s a very good friend,” he says.

            “That’s nice,” she chirps. She bounces suddenly on her heels, tugging again at Derek’s jacket. “Um, Derek, could we play sardines?”

            “Oh man, I love sardines!” Stiles exclaims. Gabrielle practically _glows._

            “Can we, pleaaaaase? Your bestest best friend wants to play it too!”

            Derek raises his eyebrows questioningly at Stiles. Stiles shrugs.

            “Fine, fine. But Stiles gets to pick who hides first, okay, Bree?”

            “’Kay!” 

            “Me?” He gapes at Derek, then at the kids—at Gabrielle, clinging to Derek’s leg, and Andy, who is wearing a very serious frown, and Olivia, smiling obligingly. “Okay. Uh.”

            He decides to take the easiest and fairest route, and does eeny, meeny, miny, moe to choose who is ‘it’. ‘It’ ends up being Andy. The rest of them press their faces against an old oak tree, hiding their eyes and counting to fifty, and then they all fan out to find him.

            The game doesn’t seem fair when most of them have werewolf senses, but he supposes it teaches them to hide their smell, and to be as quiet as possible in their surroundings, which would, in the end, be even more stimulating for werewolf kids.

            Stiles, however, isn’t blessed with werewolf senses. Instead he’s left to trudge by himself in random directions, peering behind every tree, until, out of nowhere, ten minutes into the game, a tiny hand grabs hold of his. He only screams a little. But it’s just Gabrielle at his side, holding his hand like she’s known him for years.

            “You smell nice,” she tells him, which he guesses is a four-year-old’s way of explaining her easy affection. “Like Derek.”

            Oh.

            “Why thank you,” he says, smiling and pretending to preen. She giggles.

            “You’re silly. I’ll help you find Andy. He stinks like poo.”

            “That’s not a very nice thing to say about your brother,” he says, swallowing his laughter. She tugs him slightly towards the right, so he follows, finding himself trusting her instinct far better than his own. Every once in a while she lifts her nose to the air, sniffing, before dragging him in what he assumes is a more accurate direction.

            “Stiohs?” she asks, eventually.

            “Yeah?”

            “Are you and Derek married?”

            He stops walking, accidentally tugging Gabrielle back a step to keep her hand in his.

            “You smell like mama and papa, but, um, like Derek and Stiohs, too,” she says, sagely, and somehow that is more embarrassing than William’s spiel in the kitchen. Flustered, he stumbles, and then keeps walking again with Gabrielle slightly in the lead.

            “We’re not exactly _married_.”

            “Do you love each other like mama and papa?”

            “I—I guess we do?” Stiles says. He had been worried about a third degree from William. Not from a tiny girl who is unsettlingly wise for her age.

            “Mm, you’re married.”

            “If you insist,” he says weakly. They walk another few minutes until they come to a heaping pile of wood. Gabrielle has them sneak around it, where they find Andy crouched behind it. They hide there, squished up together, Andy and Gabrielle muffling giggles in their fists when Olivia walks right past them. It takes another ten minutes before Olivia loops back and finds them. Derek, surprisingly, is the last one there—although Stiles has a feeling he waits a while to give the humans a chance.

            They play several more rounds. The sky is blushing with shades of orange and pink when Stiles actually gets a turn to hide, after Andy takes pity on him and lets him go instead. Stiles had found out quickly that he wouldn’t be the first to find someone, ever, because everyone, even Olivia, is better at finding each other than he is.

            Stiles finds a shed a ways away from the backyard. It’s not the best he can do, but he’s strapped for time, so he barges his way into it and kneels in a corner behind a shelving unit of empty pots and gardening tools. He drags over a bag of topsoil and blocks himself in, hopefully hiding himself and his scent under all the earthy garden smells.

            It’s less than five minutes later when somebody opens the door and shuts it behind them. Stiles curls up into a tiny ball and holds his breath. He can tell by how the floor creaks that it is not a small child. He is further convinced of this fact when a hand falls on his head. A gasp falls from Stiles’s mouth as it strokes its way down to his cheek. Derek has softer hands than Stiles would expect, considering he lives in the woods and works with his hands more than a lumberjack.

            His hand glides to Stiles’s chin, thumbing at his plush lower lip and pressing in. Stiles’s tongue darts out to lick Derek’s thumb, in the process letting it into his mouth, nipping him. Above him, Derek’s breath hitches. Stiles opens his eyes to find himself level with Derek’s crotch, and Derek’s hips are moving reflexively towards him. And, god, Stiles would pay great sums of money to be able to just unbutton Derek’s jeans and suck him off right here and now.

            But, no, he has to think of the children.

            He’s learned over the course of numerous rounds of sardines that talking will immediately alert the werewolves of your presence. In lieu of speaking he grabs Derek by the wrist, mouth popping off Derek’s thumb, and tugs him in closer. Derek lets Stiles drag him down to the floor, where Stiles rearranges them so he’s hugging Derek from behind. The bag of dirt barricades them in the corner. 

            Stiles wraps his arms around Derek’s waist. He rests his chin on Derek’s shoulder, breathing in the heady aroma of autumn leaves and burning wood on Derek’s skin. Stiles can’t resist kissing Derek’s neck, simply because it’s there, and because he can. Derek leans into it. The abdominal muscles under Stiles’s hands relax and tighten in turns under every minute touch of Stiles’s. When Stiles sucks lightly behind Derek’s ear, Derek grunts softly. Stiles’s stomach tingles with arousal as he kisses his way up and down Derek’s neck. It’s too dark to see in the dim light of the tiny square window beside them, but when Stiles sighs over the fine hairs on Derek’s nape, he can feel the goose bumps spreading out over Derek’s skin with his lips.

            Even though they run the risk of one of the kids finding them, Stiles insists on touching as much of Derek as he can, while he can. Since they first started kissing it has been a common theme for them to hide in corners and alcoves just to catch a few moments alone. That is why Stiles is particularly urgent to find the hem of Derek’s shirt and palm the bare skin underneath. Derek sucks in a harsh gasp of air at the chill of Stiles’s hands, his muscles flexing under Stiles’s fingers, and Stiles huffs a laugh that’s more lust than amusement.

            Stiles’s hands skim higher over Derek’s stomach, mapping out the trail of hair thickening at Derek’s waistband and thinning towards his bellybutton. Gaining momentum with every touch, Stiles’s hips tic up on impulse so he’s essentially humping Derek’s ass. Derek grips harder onto the fabric of Stiles’s jeans when he does. Derek is already panting a little, in a way that drives Stiles mad. And, fuck, Stiles knows they shouldn’t do this, but the taboo nature of the situation is only getting him hard, making his breath shake against Derek’s neck. 

            Only when Stiles’s hand wanders downward, like it’s simply the natural course of events, for Stiles to fuck Derek, does Derek grab Stiles by both his wrists to stop him. Derek’s posture is suddenly stiff and alert.

            Next second, the shed door opens, and Gabrielle trots up to them with a grin bright enough to light up the room. She must have memorized Stiles’s scent while they had been holding hands, searching for her brother. Stiles is too impressed by her to be annoyed.

            The next several minutes are spent in a significantly less sexy manner, with the three of them cuddling in the corner of the shed. Soon they’re crammed there with Olivia until eventually Andy is the last to find them.

            The shed is almost pitch black by then. When they step outside pale stars have begun to prick through the blue sky above the trees. As a unit they decide to head back to the house, Derek carrying Gabrielle on his shoulders, Andy chattering away about his collection of Spider-Man toys to Olivia. Stiles is more self-conscious out here, where it’s brighter under the rising crescent moon and he can feel Derek, behind him, watching him. Or maybe not watching him. It’s pathetic, how clumsy the simple _idea_ of being watched by Derek makes Stiles feel.

            The Hale house glows with golden light from every window on the main floor, and the smell of turkey and herbs and garlic is strong even out here. From the backyard Stiles can see his dad’s police cruiser among the gathering of vehicles. Derek swings Gabrielle off his back to put her down as they all flood into the kitchen through the back door. Inside the kitchen the commingling scents have Stiles drooling.

            Talia is placing dishes of salads and vegetables and casseroles on the table in the dining room while Isaac arranges the chinaware and cutlery. Laura, brandishing a butcher’s knife as she slices meat off a twenty-five pound turkey, yells at the kids to go wash their hands the moment they set foot in the house. William is feverishly mashing potatoes in a pot in the sink.

            “You guys are just in time,” William tells them. “Could you tell everyone dinner’s ready, Derek?”

            Derek nods, back to his unsmiling self now that playtime is over, and goes to the living room to make his announcement.

            At a loss for what to do with himself, Stiles lingers in the kitchen, close to the wall where he is least in the way. More people pile into the kitchen, kids and adults alike. His dad is busy talking to Derek’s Uncle Ray, but nods at Stiles when he passes him to go sit down. Stiles is about to follow them when someone grabs him by the upper arm, and—shit. Derek’s grandma.

            Vera Hale is much younger than most grandmothers. She has Talia’s good looks, but she has greyer and shorter hair and more wrinkles, and, strangely, Derek’s penchant for dourness and frowning. She is smiling, but in a way that has Stiles questioning whether she wants to be there, acknowledging Stiles’s existence.

            “You,” she says, and wow, he already doesn’t like where this is going, “you’re the Stilinski boy, aren’t you?”

            “Uh—why, yes, that would be me. How are you doing, Mrs. Hale?”

            “Talia tells me you have been told of my family’s secret,” she says, getting right down to business, while everyone else ignores them in favour of sitting down to eat.

            “If by ‘told’ you mean I witnessed Derek beating up a werewolf hunter, then, yes, you could say that,” Stiles says, running his mouth off, unintentionally, as is usually the case when he’s scared out of his wits.

            “Don’t be smart with me,” she snaps, and Stiles remembers, abruptly, that Derek’s grandmother was once an Alpha. He swallows, loudly.

            “I’m not being smart. Sorry.”

            “I don’t care what business you have with my grandson,” she says. “But if you harm a hair on his head, boy, I _will_ gut you.”

            A jagged edge of anger cuts through the fear in him. Stiles has been afraid of her not only because she is a vitriolic, brashly honest old lady, but because he’s afraid of what he’ll say to her. She has always been prone to discrediting humans, to reducing them to nothing but specks of dust in the grand scheme of the Hale family, and in the grand scheme of her _grandson_. And it irks him, for her to toss Stiles on the wayside after all he’s been through with this family.

            “I’m your grandson’s _boyfriend,”_ Stiles tells her, resisting the urge to yank his arm out of her grip. “And his hair is way too pretty to harm. I plan on staying with that hair until it _falls out_. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go have dinner with Derek, and his hair, and his family. You’re more than welcome to join us.”

            He thinks he’s going to have to fight for his arm back, or possibly even have it ripped off, but Vera lets go of him before he even tries to pull it away. She does not appear to be shocked by his statement. Instead—is that amusement he sees, sparkling in her eyes? If she were any other person, he might even say she’s impressed. She _should_ be impressed. Stiles has been here since Derek was a kid, and she must have noticed it, by now. She’s been to most of the Hale family gatherings, and Stiles has, too, even if he was MIA for a few years.

            Lightheaded and nonplussed, he strides away from Vera to sit next to Derek at the dining room table, where everyone’s already piling their plates with every food under the rainbow. Stiles reaches across Derek to get to the stuffing, but Derek yanks it out of his hands.

            “Hey, gimme—”

            “You just put your life in extreme danger,” Derek says in a gruff whisper. “She could’ve torn your throat out with her bare hands. I’ve _seen_ her do it.”

            “Yeah, well, she didn’t,” he points out, not quite understanding it himself.

            “Yeah,” Derek says, giving in and handing Stiles the stuffing. “I actually think that means she likes you.”

            “Only took her, what? Nine years?”

            “It took me longer to get on her good side.”

            “Well, I’m more loveable than you, so…” Stiles says, and Derek snorts, nudging him with a shoulder. Stiles begins shovelling food after food onto his plate until there is no room to spare. Across the table, Dad’s in heaven, happier than Stiles has seen him in a while. He’s eating a lot of things he shouldn’t be, but Stiles lets it slide just this once. It’s Thanksgiving, after all, and Stiles has to show Dad he appreciates him, somehow, even in the smallest ways. Stiles soaks in everything, be it the delicious food, or how the kids spend half the meal giggling and throwing peas at each other, or the way Vera and Talia tease Peter about all the things he got up to as a little boy.

            Or Dad, saying to William, halfway through the meal: “So, werewolves.”

            Stiles chokes mouthful of broccoli casserole.

            The whole table falls silent, and Stiles panics, when he sees Vera eyeing his father, especially in light of what Derek just revealed about her apparent habit of ripping people’s throats out. Stiles’s dad merely shrugs, a sheepish smile in place.

            “Anna told me about you way back when she first got sick,” he says. “I could never figure out when to let any of you guys know.” His eyes pass over Stiles, apology writ into every line of his face. “Hell, I didn’t know what to make of it when she told me. But she had some pretty solid evidence to back herself up. And—by the looks on your faces, I would wager either you all think I’m crazy, or that I’m telling the truth.”

            “No, no, you’re right, they are,” Ray says immediately, while Talia breaks down laughing and Derek touches Stiles on the wrist as if to check his pulse. The table falls into complete chaos. Talia laughs so hard that Kristen, drunker than an hour ago, joins in until they’re both in tears. Isaac quickly shakes off his wan-faced shock over Dad’s announcement by exchanging a look with Laura, beside him, who merely shrugs, and grins. Both Andy and Gabrielle decide to prove they’re werewolves by sprouting hair all over their bodies and bearing sharp teeth and claws at Stiles’s dad. The effect is ruined, somewhat, by Gabrielle’s mouthful of half-chewed peas.

            Stiles fully expects his dad to have a heart attack. But he takes it all in a stride, only sweating a bit at the temples. Through Talia and Kristen’s cackling and Andy and Gabrielle wrestling on the floor, Stiles catches William asking Dad if he’s okay with everything. Stiles doesn’t hear the answer over Gabrielle shrieking from the floor. He looks to Derek, who smiles a small smile and says, “He said, ‘of course I’m okay with it,’” and Stiles can breathe again.

            Eventually Laura gets out of her chair and scoops the kids up by the scruffs of their necks to shove them back into their seats, and Talia settles down, swiping at her eyes.

            “Oh, I’m sorry, Nathan,” she tells Stiles’s dad. “You just shocked the hell out of me. I swear, Anna must have planned this all out just to see what my reaction would be. If there’s a heaven she’s up there laughing at me right now.”

            Sobering, she reaches over William to pat Dad on the back of the hand.

            “Thank you for telling us,” she says. “I was wondering how poor Stiles would go about breaking the news—especially now,” she adds, shooting a smile in Stiles’s and Derek’s direction, “but now he doesn’t have to worry.”

            “No, he doesn’t,” Dad says, delivering another worried, apologetic look across the table at his son.

            “How about some wine to celebrate the occasion?” says Peter, coming back from the kitchen with two bottles of red. Talia snags one out of his grasp.

            “You keep that aconite wine for yourselves,” she says, offering her bottle to Stiles’s dad. At his raised eyebrows, she adds, “Oh, William makes it himself. We need wolfsbane in our alcohol to feel its effects. It’ll be a little poisonous to you if you drink it.” She glowers, briefly, at Peter, who shrugs, already pouring liberal helpings of aconite wine for himself and his wife. Laura reaches bodily across the table to steal it before they have a chance to pilfer the whole bottle. She gives Derek some, and herself more, and even sneaks Stiles some of the regular wine.

            The evening starts to feel like a dream, fuzzy-edged and warm, in the best possible way, once Stiles has eaten way more than his fill and finished his glass of wine. They take their time clearing the food away, shoving as much as they can into their steel monstrosity of a refrigerator. There’s homemade pumpkin pie and red velvet cake that Isaac made for dessert, along with Stiles’s banana cream pie. Most of the adults move to the living room to watch the football game with their desserts, while Stiles eats dessert in the dining room with most of the younger Hales.             Somehow the werewolves polish off a plate of all three desserts, and Stiles thinks they would probably eat the moon if they could. Stiles and Isaac share tiny helpings of each and it has them groaning over their stuffed bellies.

            Eventually Stiles, Isaac, Laura and Derek play a game of Crazy Eights while Olivia opts out to watch their game over her copy of Catching Fire. Stiles is pretty sure he saw Andy and Gabrielle asking his dad about his job in the living room the last time he’d visited the bathroom.

            Halfway through what is turning out to be a very competitive, borderline violent game, Stiles realizes he never asked Laura about her and Lydia’s ‘intervention.’

            “Hey, Laura?”

            “What, Yev?” she says, shoving Derek’s face away from her when he tries to cheat, although Stiles is convinced they only do anything with each other to get a reaction.

            “What did Lydia tell you to do before you came over with Deaton?”

            She tilts her head at him, feigning confusion. Abruptly, she barks out a laugh.

            “Oh! Oh, that was nothing.”

            “Really? Lydia said it was an ‘intervention,” he air quotes, “for our ‘platonic or romantic livelihoods’.” She laughs, pauses, and then laughs even harder, definitely remembering a discussion she’s had with Lydia. 

            “Intervention?” asks Derek, frowning at Laura while she giggles.

            “Oh, yeah, shit, I forgot to tell you,” says Stiles. He gives Derek and Isaac an abridged version of what happened with Lydia, Laura and Deaton. When he’s done, each of them stares at Laura, including Olivia, who has listened in on the whole discussion with her book forgotten in her lap.

            “Okay, fine, we _may_ have discussed my brother’s failing love life a few times when she’s come in to work.”

            “What the hell, Laura?” Derek asks.

            “Yeah,” she continues as though Derek isn’t attempting to murder her with a look. “I’ve known about your dumb feelings for Stiles for _aaages_ , so we saw our chance when you two started hanging out again. But it turns out all I had to do was intervene with ol’ Deaton so you’d get over yourselves. The whole ‘boyfriends’ thing you have going on now was all you.” She puts her cards on the table facedown to applaud them, somewhat sarcastically. “Good job, you guys got your heads out of your asses all by yourselves! And it only took a decade!”

            Isaac eyes her speculatively for a long moment. He pours her another glass of aconite wine.

            “It looked like you needed it,” he explains, shrugging at her acidic glare. She grunts her thanks and drinks it all in one fell swig. “And, hey, give Derek a break, Laura. When Finstock asked him to choose someone for the lacrosse team, he chose Stiles. That was almost a declaration of love, you know, considering how bad Stiles is at lacrosse.”

            Laura chokes on her wine and Stiles chokes on air, gaping at Derek, who feigns nonchalance.

            “ _You’re_ the reason I’ve been put through so much suffering?”

            “Looks like it,” he says, mouth twitching.

            “Sadistic son of a bitch,” Stiles answers, grinning, because even though he _has_ collected numerous bruises and scrapes, Derek still wanted to bring Stiles closer. Despite everything he’s been through. Watching Derek smile faintly at his handful of cards, Stiles concludes that the only reason Derek trusts anyone at all, after Kate, is because the fire didn’t kill his family. Because he gets to be surrounded, now, with the warmth of his pack.

            “Get a room, you guys,” says Laura, eyeing Stiles from the head of the table.

            “Don’t say that unless you mean it—Derek _has a room_ ,” Isaac says, horrified. Laura gasps as Derek looks at Stiles with a promise in his eyes and humour around his mouth that sends a shivery thrill straight to Stiles’s midriff. 

            “No, no, forget I said anything, oh god,” she says, panicked, as Derek chuckles.

            They finish their game of Crazy Eights, and it only deteriorates into Derek and Laura wrestling on the floor once. Stiles has decided it’s simply how werewolf siblings solve their problems. It typically ends once someone is pinned to the floor, limbs contorted, face red. Laura wins the wrestling match, while Isaac wins the card game.

            Laura is sitting on Isaac’s head as revenge for his success when Derek and Stiles choose to leave the room to see what the rest of the Hales are up to.

            “No! Guys, don’t leave me!” he yells, while Olivia giggles and Laura examines her nails, overpowering the measly human that is Isaac Lahey without an ounce of effort.

            “You’re on your own,” says Derek, touching Stiles’s hip to keep him moving, through the kitchen and the open doors leading into the living room.

            “You know, I think that right there is reason enough for Isaac to choose lycanthropy,” Stiles points out. Derek smirks.

            “He still wouldn’t beat her in a fight.”

            “You’re probably right,” Stiles amends, as they enter the living room.

            Though a Molotov cocktail had once broken through the window and burned up a portion of the living room, Stiles can see no evidence of it. All he can smell is burnt wood, which could easily be the remnants of the unlit fireplace on the opposite wall. A big TV is playing a football game in the corner beside the fireplace. Stiles doesn’t know or care which game it is. He’s always been more of a baseball fan. But his dad is sitting on the leather couch with a sleeping Gabrielle curled up in his lap and a sleeping Andy leaning against his shoulder and it is, quite possibly, the cutest thing Stiles has ever seen in his life. Ray, William and Peter are engrossed in a conversation in the armchairs on either side of the couch while Talia, Vera and Kristen chat at the island in the kitchen with coffee. Dad is otherwise unengaged, and is close to dropping off to sleep himself.

            “Wanna go upstairs?” Derek asks Stiles, leaning in close enough to make Stiles shiver and a whole universe of ideas flood into his head.

            “Sure,” he says, glancing at his dad to make sure he didn’t hear and isn’t going to leap to his feet and hurl safe sex pamphlets at them. “I just gotta talk to my dad for a sec. Could you—?”

            “I’ll be upstairs. Still know where my bedroom is?”

            “I’ll find it,” he insists. Derek lingers, glancing at Stiles’s lips like he’s fighting an internal battle. He walks backwards out of the room and vanishes around the corner. Stiles just shakes his head, laughing. Despite the serial killer-like, brooding façade he wears, Derek’s got about as much finesse at interacting with people as Stiles does. Which is to say, not a lot.

            Stiles sits down carefully beside his dad so as to not wake either of the kids.

            “Hey, Dad,” he says. Dad blinks, and looks at Stiles with a sleepy smile. “I’ll probably be home a little later—Derek and I might watch a movie.”

            “That’s fine,” he says, stroking absently at Gabrielle’s back. “Hey, you’re—you’re okay with everything, right? With the whole—werewolf thing?”

            “Yeah. I found out a while ago.”

            “And you’re not mad I didn’t tell you? It’s just, your mom, she thought we should wait until you were sixteen at least, but then…”

            “I know. But then Derek and I were stupid for a while. I get it. Everyone’s been saying so.”

            Dad chuckles, all warmth and no sarcasm at all.

            “We’re all a little stupid sometimes. Remember what I said? About the daisies?”

            “I remember the daisies,” says Stiles.

            “My point is, it all works out in the end. Your mother just wanted to keep us safe. So if you’re gonna be with Derek, now—”

            “Don’t you dare give me a safe sex talk,” Stiles says, too loudly. Peter glances over at him with raised eyebrows and a disbelieving grin, William’s eyes twinkle, and Andy stirs in his sleep.

            “Jesus, Stiles, no, I was gonna say—werewolf life isn’t always the safest, so I should take you to the shooting range once in a while. Do I _need_ to give you a safe sex talk?” His voice comes out strained.

            “No, _please,_ no. The Internet exists for a reason, and I think you know me well enough to know that I will use it to its full potential.”

            “Oh, yeah, I know,” says his dad.

            “Right. So, on that note—”

            “Stiles—”

            “I’m off to do some perfectly innocent activities with Derek. I’ll see you later?”

            “Stiles, just—stop talking.”

            “Okay! Good talk! Bye!”

            Stiles half-walks, half-runs from the room to escape the agony that has replaced Dad’s previously sedate expression. He takes the door behind the couch to reach the foyer. Even from here he can catch snippets of laughter still echoing from the dining room, the aroma of dinner sticking to the walls. He heads up the wide staircase and to the hallway to the right, where, at its end, lies Derek’s bedroom. Which he hasn’t seen for a whole three years.

            He attempts to tidy his hair at the door. It’s a fruitless endeavour, however, so he quits while he’s ahead in favour of inanely knocking on Derek’s door. It flies open before he even touches it. Heart in his throat, Stiles gapes at Derek, hand hanging in the air. Derek grabs him by the wrist and hauls him into the room, then slams the door shut by pressing Stiles into it. Derek’s lips fall on Stiles’s, and Stiles catches them, catches all of him, hands flying to Derek’s hair.

            Derek kisses Stiles thoroughly, open-mouthed and without any poise at all. He sucks at Stiles’s lip, nips it and practically fucks Stiles’s mouth with his tongue until Stiles’s whole body is singing with the need to touch as much of Derek as he can. For once, they’re not kissing in an empty classroom or at the edge of the lacrosse field. They have all the time in the world. Stiles hears the click of Derek turning the lock on the doorknob and even though the house below is full of werewolves with super-hearing, Stiles can’t be bothered to care. It’s more privacy than they’ve ever had.

            “You’re such an idiot,” says Derek, pausing between kisses to breathe words against Stiles’s mouth, forehead pressed against his forehead.

            “Aw, thanks, babe.”

            Derek gives a low, throaty rumble, nuzzling Stiles’s cheek with his stubbly jaw.

            “Do you even _know_ what you do to me, Stiles?”

            “Ha-ha—no, not at all.”

            “Idiot,” he huffs, again. “What was that in shed? Just a game?”

            “Uh,” Stiles says, mouth going dry. “Yes?”

            There was no heat behind Derek’s question. Just curiosity, and a hint of impatience. All the heat is between their bodies, meeting at the middle where Derek begins to rut, minutely, against Stiles’s thigh. Derek’s mouth falls below Stiles’s chin to nip at his pulse-point.

            “Liar.”

            “I—I wanted to touch you,” Stiles says. It sounds like confession, like a secret he’s had locked in a chest for years. Stiles’s knees wobble under the sudden weight of just how much he’s missed Derek, how much he’s _longed_ for him, especially during those years when they were apart. Between second grade and now, Stiles has always sought Derek out, in every room, hallway, forest, or street. He has needed him here, wanted him, all this time. He has always wanted Derek to sigh, warm and with something like relief, against his throat.

            It had just been safer for Stiles to admit to being in love with Lydia than it was to admit to loving Derek.

            Stiles still can’t say it aloud. Instead he shows it – makes up for all the lost time – by gathering the back of Derek’s stupidly tight shirt between his fingers and smashing his mouth into Derek’s, crushing their bodies together. 

            “I can’t stand how you make me feel,” is all he’s capable of admitting, heavily, into Derek’s chin, when they part by less than an inch. “I think you’re an evil mastermind, because I just—I want to—I just want you _so bad,_ it’s not even _possible_ —”

            “Shut up,” Derek says. “Just take—touch me.” He rubs against Stiles with his entire body, groin-to-groin, chest-to-chest, his lips brushing, lightly, maddeningly, against Stiles’s lips.

            “Okay, fuck, a horizontal surface, maybe?” Stiles pants, bumping the back of his head against the door when Derek licks a stripe up the side his neck towards his ear with the electrifying scrape of stubble. Derek grunts his affirmation and grabs Stiles by the ass, picking him up as easily as he did at Lydia’s Halloween party. He’s clumsier now, stumbling over a sock he’d left on the floor and throwing Stiles onto the queen bed. He crawls up Stiles’s body to capture his lips in his again while Stiles is still trying to gather his bearings.

            But he can’t, because this is _Derek_ , so instead Stiles merely does as promised. He touches Derek. He starts with his hair, because he’s always loved how it’s so much softer than it looks. His hands skate down, inch by inch, until they’re toying with the bottom of Derek’s shirt. It really isn’t enough, to just have Derek above him, nipping bruises into the tender flesh of his throat and moaning sweetly when Stiles digs his fingers into his hips. Stiles never had a chance to get to second base with Derek in the shed. He’s determined to get there now.

            As though he’s read Stiles’s mind, Derek sits up in Stiles’s lap to fling his grey shirt onto the floor. A shirtless Derek is something Stiles has seen probably thousands of times, but he’s never had the option of touching him like this. Stiles runs his hands reverently up the smooth planes of Derek’s abdomen and across his ribs, where Derek twitches under his fingers, ticklish, and finally Stiles thumbs Derek’s nipples till they’re pert.

            Derek shivers and sighs. Stiles licks one nipple, circling it with his tongue so Derek has to latch onto Stiles’s hips to ground himself.

            “Jesus, I thought you were a virgin,” Derek says through his teeth, as Stiles laps at his other nipple.

            “I might be,” Stiles says. “Why? I’m not, like, really horrible, am I?”

            “No,” Derek says. He laughs, albeit breathlessly. “No, you’re fine.”

            “Let’s, uh, hope it stays that way,” Stiles says, a jab of nervousness lancing through him only then, as Derek’s hand wanders to the button of Stiles’s jeans. Derek glances up at Stiles, searching for permission. Stiles gives it with the slightest nod. Derek pops the button, unzipping him slowly, and finally slips his hand in, under jeans and boxers both. Stiles gasps at the sensation of Derek’s hand on his cock, because _holy shit,_ someone else’s hand is on his cock _._ It sets him alight in ways his own hand never has. They could have been doing this _so much sooner_ , for fuck’s sake.

            His reservations vanishing like smoke in a strong breeze, Stiles thrusts up into Derek’s hand. Derek tugs at Stiles’s pants with his free hand until they’re halfway down his thighs and he can properly get his hand around Stiles’s cock. He’s awkward, at first, obviously having never done this to another guy before, but Stiles doesn’t care. Not when Derek is kindling a fire in Stiles that begins at the base of his spine and spreads outward, to the very tips of his fingers and toes.

            His heart is racing, awash in emotion, and he has to kiss Derek, _has to_ , so he does. Derek forgets about Stiles’s cock, the more they kiss. Stiles reminds him by fingering the outline of Derek’s erection through his jeans until Derek is trembling above him. Stiles frees Derek’s cock, shaking only a little himself. He works Derek’s cock, briefly, for the mere sake of touching it. He wants to hear Derek’s strangely delicate huffs of delight for the rest of his life. Stiles would die this way, if he could, with sparks dashing across his skin after every touch, every kiss.

            Eventually Stiles thumbs the precome dripping from Derek’s tip to slick them both up as best he can. Derek lets out a shuddering breath and suddenly he’s leaning over Stiles, grinding down into him, sliding his cock over the length of Stiles’s shaft.

            “Fuck, Derek,” Stiles says, no breath behind his words.

            “Yeah, that’s the idea,” Derek says. Stiles laughs, and it melts into a groan when Derek’s cock hits his balls in the most delicious way. He twitches like he’s been wounded, pleasure crackling through him as Derek slides up and across his cock again. Stiles grips the back of Derek’s thighs in both hands, hips stuttering up to greet every one of Derek’s forward thrusts, until Derek loses his clumsiness, gains a sort of rhythm the more he grinds into Stiles.

            Stiles can’t tell if it’s Derek’s cock or his own that’s leaking onto his bared stomach. All he knows is the insistent heat in his abdomen is growing, tightening, his body practically vibrating under Derek. Derek is dragging moan after moan out of him, and Derek is echoing them with these soft, exquisite grunts—barely a sound at all. It isn’t long before his movements quicken against Stiles, a hint of desperation in them, and Stiles leans up to close the space between their mouths.

            They kiss open-mouthed and dirty, more tongue and teeth than lips, while Stiles takes them both in hand to jerk them off. With Derek still flexing his hips slightly and the added pressure of his own hand, Stiles feels his balls contract and every muscle stiffen. It’s like a dam breaks inside of him when he comes. He bucks his hips so violently that if Derek wasn’t clutching the front of shirt like a lifeline he might have fallen off.

            It takes a minute for Stiles to regain any self-awareness, and when he finally does, he’s trembling and panting like he’s run a marathon. Derek is sprawled on top of him, arms braced on either side of his shoulders, worsening matters by sliding his hard cock over Stiles’s flagging, oversensitive one.

            Stiles can’t say no to that. He reaches down to slick his and Derek’s cock with his own come, still flinching with the remnants of his orgasm. It only takes a few more strokes before Derek muffles his cries in Stiles’s mouth and streaks Stiles’s exposed stomach with come. He keeps rubbing against Stiles as he kisses him, hard, at first, but gentling as he falls down from the rush of endorphins. After a while, when Stiles’s jaw is just shy of _too_ sore, they end up just lying there, Stiles on his back, Derek curled into his side, drawing designs with the come on Stiles’s stomach.

            It tickles more than it should. Stiles tries to shove Derek’s hand away, but it only encourages Derek – a _smiling_ Derek – to climb onto his lap again and manhandle the shirt off of him. He slinks with a predator’s grace down Stiles’s body to lick the come off his belly with a deft tongue.

            “Christ, that’s gross,” Stiles says, writhing under the wet heat of Derek’s mouth.

            “That was a lie,” Derek says, with such mirth he might have sung it, were he any other person. He cleans Stiles up completely. Then, like Derek lives to torture Stiles, he flicks the head of Stiles’s spent cock with the tip of his tongue. Stiles gives a full-body spasm, a whimper erupting from his mouth. He accidentally slaps Derek in the face in an attempt to shove him away.

            “Can we _please_ just cuddle?” Stiles whines. Derek does it again, once more, as revenge for the slap, and at last he throws himself onto the bed beside Stiles again. Derek wraps himself around Stiles, a leg thrown over one of Stiles’s and an arm slung across his chest. Stiles is somehow not surprised in the least that Derek is obnoxious and clingy in bed where he’s standoffish and menacing in every other area of life.

            It occurs to him that perhaps sex made Derek more talkative, too—and perhaps that was why he had revealed his secrets to Kate and ended up with a living room that smells like a forest fire. The thought leaves a sour taste in Stiles’s mouth, which he chooses to sweeten again, by kissing back of Derek’s hand.

            Toying with Derek’s hair, Stiles distracts himself by taking in Derek’s bedroom for the first time since he’d arrived at Derek’s door. There is an oak desk with Derek’s laptop in the corner across from the bed, between both the windows, and posters of classic horror films on walls that have been painted an olive green. He has the same oaken bookcases he made with his dad in the corner next to the door, but they are weighted down with more books now than they were three years ago.  

            Derek absently strokes Stiles’s chest, right over his heart, so Stiles knows, when it speeds up, that Derek will catch it instantly. And he does. His chin pokes into the tender spot on his shoulder when he looks up at Stiles’s face, and the soothing motion of his hand on Stiles’s chest stops.

            “What time do you want me to leave?” Stiles asks.

            Derek’s response is to shoot a dirty look at him from where he’s still nuzzling against his shoulder. In a blink Derek is getting up off the bed and tugging Stiles’s jeans down by the cuffs. Stiles yelps as Derek yanks them clean off and tosses them to the floor along with his underwear and socks. With a stormy expression Derek sheds the rest of his clothes like they’ve personally offended him. That, Stiles supposes, is the best answer he’s going to get from Derek.

            “Movie?” Derek asks, standing at the end of the bed with his arms crossed, naked, as though the sight of him is not utterly distracting. The sweat is still shining on Derek’s skin, every muscle lit perfectly by the buttery yellow light of the lamp beside Derek’s bed. God. He’s beautiful. Stiles can only nod, his mouth hanging open.

            “God, stop it,” Stiles says, to Derek’s back. Derek faces him to tilt his head and frown, and Stiles flings an arm over his eyes and laughs. “You’re too pretty. _Stop_ it.” 

            He hears Derek huff, and it could be either a chuckle or a sigh. Derek’s footsteps creak minutely on the hardwood as he collects his laptop from his desk. The bed dips as he sits down again beside Stiles. Slightly self-conscious in his nudity, Stiles pads to Derek’s en suite bathroom to empty his bladder, because he just had sex, and his body has needs.

            Stiles has to stop to gape at himself in the mirror for a moment once he’s done—because he looks absolutely _ruined_. His lips are swollen and red, his cheeks splotchy with pink, and his hair is sticking up in every direction. He flushes even more when he sees the hickeys already forming into bruises all over his neck and collarbone.

            Everyone is going to know what they were up to. _Everyone_. Even his dad. The thought renders Stiles more than a little unsteady on his feet as he heads back into the bedroom. Derek is lounging under the covers when he returns, propped against a pile of pillows with his laptop on his knees. Stiles lingers in the doorway for a long moment, as though to memorize everything, until, finally, he catches his breath and his nervousness falls still like sediment. He slides under the covers beside Derek.

            They watch Shaun of the Dead, because Derek has good taste, sometimes, even if it’s not exactly the epitome of romantic. It’s comfortable, it’s _them_ , and that’s all that matters in the end. They watch it with Stiles bundled up under Derek’s arm, the laptop balanced on Derek’s lap. Stiles falls asleep halfway through the movie, wrapped in the smoky scent of Derek, with Derek’s fingertips drawing designs into the tender skin of his wrist. 

 

***

 

            It’s disconcerting, at first, to wake up curled around someone else’s body, in someone else’s room. Especially when the room is lit only by moonlight and there are no sounds but the house settling around them and, outside, the brittle autumn leaves trembling in a breeze. Against him, Derek is breathing evenly in sleep. Stiles has no idea what woke him. It takes a few seconds to get his bearings, to yield to the furnace heat of Derek again and to conclude that it is Derek’s body, against his, that woke him.

            He doesn’t remember Derek putting away the laptop or turning off the lamp, yet here they are, in the dark, the entire front of Stiles’s body pressed against the back of Derek’s. Stiles is more awake now than he has ever been. His skin is practically humming, his cock stiffening against the curve of Derek’s ass.

            Scratch that, maybe it’s pure _want_ that woke him. Stiles can’t regain his stamina as quickly as Derek, but the desire he has for Derek is insatiable and limitless. At a glance over Derek’s head Stiles sees by the glowing green numbers of Derek’s alarm clock that it’s a little past one o’clock. It’s only been a few hours since he fell asleep. He doesn’t even consider going back to sleep. Not now, not when his mind is still ringing with what he’d done with Derek a few hours ago. Not when his body thrums with the mere _idea_ of Derek and him, together. He wonders if Kate has fucked Derek right here—if they, too, have watched zombie movies in bed.

            Stiles is a possessive son-of-a-bitch about the people he cares about. He can’t help it. But at least, unlike Kate, Stiles cares. He kisses the topmost bump of Derek’s spine, right where his tattoo begins. It’s not the ink of a tattoo – just a kiss – but some darker part of Stiles hopes there will be some mark of him on Derek, within Derek, years from now. Stiles’s hand flattens on Derek’s stomach, fingertips digging in just the slightest as he kisses his way up to Derek’s shoulder.

            Derek stirs when Stiles meets curve of his shoulder. He then wakes on a shuddering inhale, pushing back into Stiles’s cock on instinct. Goose bumps shimmer out across Derek’s skin as Stiles scrapes his nails across his ribs. Stiles’s chest is beginning to heave as though he’s been gathered up by a tidal wave, and his heart is thundering, preparing for the inevitable sensation of being hurled against the rocks. Instead he has Derek at his mercy. Derek, who is just as enduring as those rocks. Stiles bites into the meat of Derek’s shoulder, working a bruise into it even though he knows it will be gone before it purples.

            He does it for the way Derek’s hips fall backward into his waiting cock, and for the way Derek gasps like he’s still dreaming when Stiles fingers the seam of his lips. Stiles thrusts his index finger into Derek’s mouth like he’s fucking it, then two fingers, and then he’s streaking the wetness down the expanse of Derek’s torso to wrap his fingers around his cock. All the air vacates Stiles’s lungs when he finds Derek just as hard as he is. 

            “Fuck,” he hisses into the skin at the back of Derek’s neck, squeezing reflexively around him. “I really—I want to—”

            “Stiles,” Derek says, precome adding to the wetness of Stiles’s palm on Derek as Stiles slowly tugs his cock. “Fuck me.”

            The immediacy of Derek’s answer gives Stiles pause.

            “Are you serious?” says Stiles, concerned about whether or not Derek truly thought he was dreaming. “You know this is real life, right?”

            Derek’s answer is to rudely push back his hips, rubbing against Stiles and up into the hand around his own cock.

            “Obviously,” Derek says, barely a tremble to his voice at all.

            “It’s just—” Stiles breaks off as Derek knocks his hand off of him and turns around to face Stiles and kiss his raw, worn-out mouth, both of them on their sides under the blankets.

            “Just shut up and fuck me, Stiles,” he says, parting after a moment by an inch—enough that Stiles catches the blue gleam of his eyes in the dim lighting. Stiles has never in his life seen anything more tantalizing. He closes the space to kiss Derek again, slower, more painstakingly, now that the night has them wrapped away and hidden out of sight. His jaw is cramping up when they finally stop to catch their breath. At that point Stiles can’t bear how hard he is, how much he’s leaking onto his belly. How much he wants Derek.

            “It’s just, I didn’t think you’d let me,” he mutters, more to himself than to Derek, because it’s too much to say to him, directly. Derek responds with a scornful frown. Then he scoffs, and lifts Stiles’s hand up to his mouth to nip its palm, chastening.

            “I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do,” Derek says, soothing the bite with a kiss. “But I know you want this, Stiles, and I swear, if you don’t fuck me right now, I _will_ dismember you.”

            “Okay, yeah, dismemberment is totally hot,” Stiles tries and fails to deadpan, with Derek sparking his skin to life with tongue and teeth on his wrist. “You sound like your grandma.”

            The glare Derek delivers him is a mix between horror and disgust. But the sharp edges soon soften into a laugh. Derek’s face falls forward into Stiles’s shoulder and he shakes under the brunt of his dismayed amusement.

            “I can’t believe you’re the first person I’ve allowed in my bed,” Derek says. “Your stupidity is _blinding_.”

            Stiles forgets whatever he was going to say about Derek’s grandma and her threatening demeanour, and instead he says, “What, is your bed a holy relic or something?”

            “It is,” Derek answers, kissing his palm again.

            “Right, then, uh, why don’t we commit some sacrilege?” asks Stiles, licking his lips, which he sees Derek track with those ethereal eyes. “So what do you want me to do?” Because he wants to show Derek just how much he cares, how much _better_ he is than Kate ever was, even though he’s sure Derek must already know, if he’s truly never invited anyone else to his bed.

            Derek rolls away from Stiles’s body to go through the drawer on his bedside table. The movement causes the sheets to slide off Derek’s body onto the floor, giving Stiles a perfect view of Derek’s ass as he lies on his stomach. Like a starving man in front of a gourmet meal, Stiles has to do something about it. He squeezes the nearest cheek. Derek jolts, and a bottle of lube slips out of his fingers onto the bedspread.

            Such an instantaneous reaction imbues Stiles with a strange sense of boldness. He sprawls out across the bed to better deliver a kiss to the same cheek he squeezed. The muscle twitches, ticklish.

            “Stiles, what are you—” Stiles interrupts him with tongue and delicate scrapes of teeth just to hear Derek gasp. Derek’s knees draw up under his body, seeking purchase as Stiles slowly spreads his cheeks with his thumbs, and that’s as much invitation as he’s going to get. He scrambles closer, between Derek’s legs, to better lick his way towards Derek’s entrance.

            When Stiles finally taps against Derek’s hole with his tongue, Derek lets loose a low, agonized groan into a fistful of blankets. Any shyness Stiles might have had evaporates, now that he’s heard Derek, felt his own cock jump in response. Every flick of his tongue is firmer, presses further into the heat of him until Derek’s soaked. There’s a fine tremble running through Derek’s tense body as he curves his ass up in little hitches towards Stiles’s mouth. Eventually, Stiles hears fabric ripping from where Derek is still tangling his fingers in the sheets.

            “Stiles, I’m going to kill you, I swear,” he says, absolutely _wrecked_ , as Stiles curls his tongue inside him.

            With a last deft streak of tongue from the back of Derek’s balls to the bottom of his spine, Stiles sits back and says, innocently, “Fine, pull my arm, why don’t you?”

            “I’ll _rip off your arm_ ,” Derek says, throwing the bottle of lube at Stiles. It bounces off his shoulder and into his lap.

            “You’re so bossy,” Stiles muses, hands shaking a little as he fumbles to uncap the bottle he’s been handed. “Uh—condom?”

            Derek flips over onto his back, a petulant line in between his brow that is diminished greatly by the flush travelling from cheeks to ears to his chest, and by his harsh, open-mouthed panting.

            “You don’t need one. Werewolves can’t get diseases, and obviously I can’t impregnate you. But if you want one, I have—”

            “No,” says Stiles, heart deafening in his ears, “no, I trust you.”

            The frown smoothens out. Derek licks the perspiration from above his lip, and Stiles leans across him to kiss him, to taste the saltiness, before at last he kneels between Derek’s legs again. When Derek grabs a pillow from behind his head to put under his ass, and Stiles’s heart jumps even higher towards his throat.

            Okay. He’s actually going to do this. His hands refuse to stay steady on the bottle of lube, but he keeps telling himself it’s his first time and he’s allowed to be nervous, and excited, and a whole jumble of feelings all at once. He’s allowed to feel everything. And he wants to. He’s _too much_ of everything—of fear, of affection, of excitement, and he could burst from the inside out if he allowed it.

            Stiles looks up at Derek to verify that he’s not the only one who feels it. Derek is still hard, his breathing still quick. Stiles’s eyes have adjusted enough to be able to tell, by the mere light of the crescent moon through the windows, that Derek’s eyes are blown black with barely a sliver of reflective blue. It’s unbelievably hot to see how much he can drive Derek mad. He wants to drive him madder.

            He squirts a copious amount of lube onto his fingers. He starts by sliding his index finger carefully into Derek’s hole where he’s already loose from Stiles’s tongue. When Stiles adds his middle finger, pushing slowly further in, Derek gasps and bears down on him. Now his eyes are shut tight, and Stiles doesn’t want to look away. Derek is grinding down into him, desperate for more of whatever world of pleasure Stiles has just breached. The more he watches Derek fuck down onto his fingers, the more confused he becomes by the notion that he hasn’t started fucking him himself. Stiles chalks it up to anxiety, as he often does. It must be keeping at least a portion of his desire at bay.

            It still doesn’t stop him from licking up from Derek’s hole to his balls just to hear Derek _whine_.

            Stiles grins, proud, as always, by the reactions he’s capable of provoking. He pulls his fingers out, slow and steady, to find that his own cock has barely flagged at all. He slicks himself with more lube, grunting softly at the sensation of his own hand. Stiles has to squeeze his cock to keep from coming right then and there when he sees Derek reach down to touch his own cock, watching Stiles.

            “Oh Jesus fuck,” Stiles says, awed. “Can I—”

            “Yeah,” Derek says, impatience having abated into nothing more than pure want. There’s a tremor to his voice that could be nervousness, or it could be something else entirely—something Stiles isn’t sure he wants to analyze.

            Stiles shuffles in closer to Derek, seeking the heat that’s rising off Derek in waves. Derek’s body has run hotter than normal since they were kids. It’s yet another trait that endears Stiles to him, because Stiles is colder, and has dressed in layers all his life. He covets the heat almost as much as he covets Derek. And right now Derek is like a furnace. A house on fire. All Stiles wants is to wrap himself up in that heat.

            One hand on his cock and the other on Derek’s right thigh, Stiles lines himself up with Derek’s hole and carefully, cautiously, presses his way in. Stiles gasps like he’s suffocating with every inch. Derek does, too, pained yet somehow reverent, his body shaking under the pressure of Stiles inside him. Derek is hotter than ever, clinging and twitching and glorious around Stiles’s cock.

            Stiles wants to move, more than anything in the world, but he waits, for Derek’s sake. With Derek’s thighs on either side of his hips, Stiles trails his fingers through the sweat on Derek’s chest and down his stomach and over the triangle of hair beneath Derek’s bellybutton. When Stiles brushes the very tips of his fingers over Derek’s cock, which is still flushed and straining, Derek flinches.

            Stiles glances up at Derek’s face. Derek’s eyes flicker with blue, not from the moon’s reflection, but from some inner light of their own. Stiles’s chest tightens under the weight of Derek’s gaze.

            “God, you’re seriously so pretty it’s _unfair,_ ” Stiles says, laughing.

            “Everything about you is unfair,” Derek grinds out. He rolls his hips as some sort of cruel revenge against Stiles, his movements stilted. It shakes Stiles to his core, ripples of tingling pleasure starting at his cock and moving out to the tips of his fingers and toes.

            Stiles enacts his vengeance by finally fucking Derek in small, aborted thrusts, aiming blindly towards the spot he brushed with his fingers. Stiles isn’t used to the action of fucking, or the sensations, and he can already tell he’ll last all of ten seconds. But Stiles digs his fingers hard into the muscle of Derek’s thighs and works at seeking out a rhythm, each shift of his hips eliciting strange half-whimpers from Derek. He leans across Derek’s body for the sole purpose of running his tongue from abdomen to sternum. Derek shivers from head to toe; to say that Derek is the most reactive Stiles has seen him would be an understatement.

            Stiles is addicted to it. He wants to memorize every tender piece of Derek’s skin, the softness of his hair, and the smile Derek gets when Stiles is being particularly stupid. Stiles was never this way with Lydia. It was always unreciprocated, and existed more out of necessity than anything sustainable.

            This is real. This exists because they want it to.

            Stiles pushes deeper, shuddering, back bowing. He can feel the way Derek tightens around him whenever his stomach brushes Derek’s cock, or whenever Stiles groans particularly loud above him. Derek burns bright with each shift of Stiles’s body, whether he’s slamming into him or pulling out nearly all the way. Derek’s electric heat seems to jump directly into Stiles’s blood, building a thunderstorm in his belly.

            Just like that, like magic, Stiles isn’t clumsy anymore, the motion of his hips more precise. It’s obvious within minutes that Stiles is succeeding at driving Derek mad. Derek’s following every push of Stiles’s hips with determination, his face open and vulnerable. Stiles gives in when he sees it, and sprawls across Derek, hands landing on either side of Derek’s shoulders. Their bodies are closer now, Derek’s cock smearing precome on Stiles’s stomach as he fucks him, faster and faster. Stiles kisses Derek hungrily, whining into it.

            “You’re so—” Stiles gasps, as the storm grows inside him, thundering in his ears. He rains kisses across Derek’s cheek to his jaw, trying to cover every part of Derek with himself. “I just, I love you, fuck,” he finishes, breathing the words into Derek’s cheek like a brand.

            “I know,” Derek says, disentangling his fingers from the sheets to grip Stiles’s ass in both hands, controlling the way Stiles moves against him, forcing him to slam into Derek even harder. Stiles chuckles breathlessly into the side of Derek’s neck. He’s about to comment on Derek’s poor choice of words when one of Derek’s fingers circles his hole and presses in.

            Stiles immediately forgets everything he had to say, ever, because within seconds his orgasm is crashing through him like an explosion.

            He keeps fucking Derek through the aftershocks, shuddering and gasping.  Derek goes quiet, breath shortening and the shift of his hips intensifying against Stiles’s still-hard cock. Derek’s hand falls from Stiles’s ass to snake between their bodies so he can take himself in hand with the same resolve Stiles imagines Derek would get during a fight. Stiles kisses him again, simply craving the taste of him, while Derek’s hand works furiously between them.

            It’s enough for Derek, whose chest begins to heave, his mouth falling open under Stiles’s as his hips rise off the bed and he streaks both their bellies with come. Stiles falls onto Derek, arms giving out under him like he’s been through rigorous lacrosse practice. He pulls out and collapses beside Derek to stroke Derek through the rest of his orgasm. He strokes Derek till he’s flinching at Stiles’s touch and shoving his hands away.

            Stiles clings to the side of Derek’s body, loving how loose-limbed and sedate Derek is when they’re alone. Derek clings back, because, as Stiles has found out, Derek is needy after sex. Maybe Derek’s needy in every facet of life—Stiles just hadn’t known it. It’s bitter, and it’s sweet, the knowledge of Derek wanting him for years, _years_ , even when he had been with someone else. Even after that person had betrayed him.

            “You just Han Solo’d me,” Stiles says, laughing and giddy in the aftermath.

            “Did I?” Derek asks. His hands are gliding up and down Stiles’s back, goose bumps following in their wake. “I didn’t notice.”

            “You definitely noticed, you asshole—with your little, ‘I know.’” Stiles air quotes at Derek, mimicking his voice in a deep rumble. It leads to Stiles being thrown onto his back and kissed like Derek’s trying to suck the life-force out of him through his tongue. They kiss until their exhaustion wins out and the kissing melts into just breathing each other’s air.

            Eventually they reposition themselves, with Derek’s arm over Stiles’s waist, his body pressed against his back and a leg between both of Stiles’s. Derek is wrapped around Stiles like he wants their naked bodies – or more aptly, their scents - to merge during the night.

            “I trust you,” Derek says, when Stiles’s limbs are leaden, dragging him towards sleep. “There haven’t been many humans that I trust, after—after Kate. But I trust you.”

            The way he says ‘trust’ sounds like ‘love’. Stiles is certain that with Derek it means more. He says it to Stiles as though it tastes better than any other word. Stiles squeezes the hand that rests on his stomach, and says, “I trust you, too.” His heartbeat belies the composure in his tone when he adds, quietly: “Laura told me I’m part of your pack. Is it—it’s not, like, wrong? For me to believe her?”

            Derek lightly digs his teeth into the back of Stiles’s neck, huffing out a scolding breath.

            “Not wrong,” Derek says. Stiles’s heart takes flight, before at last it calms, with Derek kissing away his bite marks. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”

            “Yes, ma’am,” Stiles answers.

            His fingers are still tangled with Derek’s, and the laughter is still drawing lines around Stiles’s mouth, when he follows Derek’s advice and goes to sleep. 

 

***

 

            Stiles wakes to find the spot beside him empty. The burnished morning sun and Derek’s leftover heat warm the sheets. Stiles rolls into that space, luxuriating in Derek’s fiery musk and the sticky scent of sex. He only gets up when he wonders where Derek went. Derek’s the early bird, and it’s early, so he can’t have wandered far. Stiles cleans himself up in Derek’s en suite bathroom, washing his face with a washcloth and scrubbing at a spot of come on his stomach that hadn’t rubbed off on the blankets. He even brushes his teeth with Derek’s toothbrush, assuming that after what they got up to last night, Derek won’t mind.

            Grinning uncontrollably, he sends Scott a quick text to let him know he finally lost his v-card. After dressing in yesterday’s clothes he then heads down the creaky stairs, where he can hear muted conversation from the kitchen. He follows the sound. The kitchen is occupied by a bedraggled Peter at the table, bouncing Gabrielle on his knee, and Laura, who is cooking four giant frying pans’ worth of pancakes on the stove. Talia is mid-conversation with Derek at the island with a cup of coffee. Derek’s ears, Stiles notes, are a deep shade of crimson.

            “—as long as you enjoyed yourself, who am I to judge? I just hope you _offered_ to use a condom—”

            “Yeah, he did,” Stiles interjects, without meaning to, and Peter and Laura both burst out laughing. Derek shoots a glare at Stiles that would make lesser men quail. Gabrielle is ignoring the conversation, thankfully, in favour of covering her face with maple syrup.

            “Of course he did. Derek’s a good boy,” Talia says, ruffling Derek’s hair like she did when they were twelve. Derek lets her, unlike when they were twelve. “And for what it’s worth, I’m glad you chose each other.”

            “Yeah,” says Laura, “and clearly nothing is sacred among werewolves, so try not to do it so loud next time, okay? I really didn’t need to know about Derek quoting Han Solo.”

            “Jesus Christ, Laura!” Derek barks.

            “It’s true! Nothing is sacred! Nothing! I knew Mom and Dad ‘wrestled’ a lot at night by age six—”

            Derek smacks at Laura’s hand just as she’s about to flip a pancake, and the pancake drops to the floor with a sad _plop_. As is typical for them, Laura and Derek begin to fight, chasing each other through the house, growling and taking swipes at each other. The effect is ruined somewhat by Laura’s laughter, and the fact that she is still wielding a spatula. Gabrielle slides off her father’s lap to collect the half-cooked pancake from the floor and eat the mess in one mouthful.

            Werewolves are crazy, but somehow Stiles loves them all.

            His face must reveal the affection that twists at his gut, because Talia is standing near him, touching him on the shoulder.

            “I am, Stiles. I’m glad it was you.”

            Stiles nods, for once at a loss for what to say but a heartfelt, “Thanks.”

            Talia leans in, nuzzling her cheek against his face as she has done with her children since Stiles first met her.

            “Your mom would be proud,” she says, kissing him on the jaw and pulling away. Stiles swallows on a lump, nodding inanely at her as Laura returns to wash her spatula and Derek follows, redder than he was when he was last in the kitchen. As Laura gets back to her pancakes, Talia sits down again with her coffee. “Oh, but you two better watch out for my darling mother. If _she_ heard you, you might be in for a slight beating.”

            Derek and Stiles exchange terrified glances.

            “Well,” says Derek, grabbing Stiles by the hand, “luckily we’re going out for coffee.”

            “That’s probably a good idea,” says Laura, far too delighted by their plight.    Stiles allows himself be dragged out into the foyer, where Derek manhandles his leather jacket onto Stiles. Derek leads the way through the crunching leaves to his Camaro. Only when they’re safely nestled in the car and Stiles is buckled up does Derek lean over and kiss Stiles on the lips. Stiles kisses back with the same ease as waves lapping the shoreline.

            “Good morning,” says Derek, smiling, all crinkly and unabashed.

            “Morning,” Stiles answers. His stomach flutters, as it is wont to do whenever Derek is near. It’s both fantastic and terrifying to feel this way, probably because Derek, himself, is both fantastic and terrifying. Derek kisses Stiles on the edge of his lip, on his cheek, where Talia had kissed him, then at the corner of Stiles’s eye.

            “Americano?” Derek says, dragging himself away by an inch or two.

            “How’d you know?” Stiles asks, again, because he never got a straight answer out of him before.

            “I can’t describe it, exactly,” Derek answers, slowly, almost shyly, his face too close to see without everything blurring together. “But your smell… it’s sweet from all the candy, but bitter, too. Like all you drink is really strong coffee. I like it.”

            “I am one with the coffee,” Stiles says, nodding, not surprised in the least. He's been drinking coffee as black and strong as mud since he was fourteen.

            Derek laughs, leaning in close to Stiles for the sole purpose of breathing him in, nosing at his throat like Stiles is an addiction. But just as Stiles’s chest begins to ache under the onslaught of sensation, Derek kisses him one last time on the lips and pulls away, smiling irresistibly.

            “Let’s get you some coffee,” he says.

            He starts the car. They drive around the Hale house and through the woods in a peaceful sort of silence, the sun flashing at them through the trees, lighting up Derek’s face as Stiles watches him.

            The car smells of everything Derek—of cinnamon and leather and smoky wood. But if Stiles concentrates, it smells a bit like him, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to follow me on tumblr at [nascentgalaxies.tumblr.com!](http://nascentgalaxies.tumblr.com)


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